


Bad sister

by Piriluk (orphan_account)



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Parenting, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brother/Sister Incest, Drama, Drama & Romance, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Family Drama, Family Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Incest, Mental Anguish, Mental Instability, Mild Smut, Other, Romance, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Angst, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5247206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Piriluk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was always less important, disregarded by everyone—just a shadow of his 'perfect' sister. She desperately wanted to make it right; she wanted to give him the love he deserved. rinlen, incest, FIVESHOT</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh nooooooooo another incest fanfiction /falls into hell. this fanfic was the bane of my existence (/looks at twitter/ still is, actually)
> 
> this is completed, im uploading it from ffnet. i will upload it maybe every few weeks? idk. i will stagger it. i just dont want to upload it all at once.
> 
> dearest whimsyappletea wrote the collab piece (len's pov) for this but unfortunately she's not signing up to ao3 until december so if you wann a read it you have to go to the shitty worl of ffnet ahahha :))

 

There were a few things wrong with Rin's family.

Or, well,  _a lot_  wrong.

It wasn't like she was afraid to admit to it - she was probably part of the problem, after all, but… as she entered her final year of high school, it occurred to her that she had to do something.

Something. At the very least.

The thought, after seventeen or so years, had only occurred to her at the time. Day in, day out, as she watched her brother become isolated - not once had she really processed it. She never really took notice of the problem, how truly messed up her family was, though she'd witnessed it many times. She just stood by, watched it unfold before her eyes, and became exactly what she didn't want to be:

The bad guy.

.

.

.

* * *

**Bad sister**

* * *

.

.

.

It began with simple things, things that any other normal person wouldn't have to think about:

Hello. Good morning. Hi Len, how are you? How was school? I'll see you later. Okay, bye. Goodnight, sleep well.

Simple things, like waves and acknowledgements, smiles and greetings - which got Rin thinking: why,  _why_  didn't she do this regularly? Why did she just stop reaching out to him? What kind of absurd sister just  _stops_  - stops talking to her brother, has to actually think about simply talking to him? When did it happen -  _why?_  Just why, why and when and how -?

She didn't want to be that person. She didn't. She didn't want to look like she was taking sides, like she wasn't there for him - she was stupid, she really was. She took the easy path, the path where she pretended it wasn't happening - that the problems at home weren't real, that she was really as perfect as everyone thought she was - but she wasn't. She wasn't.

Neither was Len perfect. Neither was her family perfect. She needed to fix that. She needed to fix the mistakes she and everyone else had made, to reach out to Len, because he was her brother and this was her last chance to make things right for once.

Rin admitted that she knew her attempts to make things right wouldn't go that smooth. She knew he'd be unresponsive, she knew that it wouldn't be so easy to gain someone's trust back after you had just sat by uselessly watching them be belittled by their very own parents. She knew Len wouldn't forgive her, and that was okay.

Unsurprisingly, to every small hello or good morning she said when she passed him in the hallway or at home, came the clench of the jaw in reply. To every wave or grin when she caught his eye came a glare, or just a blank look. It was simple attempts, but she would keep trying.

Even though with every rejection Rin felt less and less motivated to keep at it, to keep reaching out for him - the boy who had shut everyone out and pushed them away, the boy who sat alone at home while her parents dragged her shopping or to the cinemas, the boy who seemed to be so close, but worlds away - she wouldn't stop. Because with every rejection, came the reminder that Len was her twin brother, her blood, her family.

Len was the boy who had once held her hand and wiped away her tears, the boy who had comforted her when she crept into his room at night, terrified by a nightmare, the boy who had once shared with her his secret smile; the smile like the universe was theirs for the taking.

It wasn't over yet.

She wanted desperately to bring those times back - the fun, the happiness, the innocence - and she wouldn't give in without trying her best first.

As she watched him walk away after another failed attempt at reconciliation, she smiled to herself and thought,  _I won't let you go this time_.

.

.

.

A month passed, and slowly but surely, Rin's small attempts to make things better between them were... getting somewhere.

It wasn't exactly working the way she'd liked it to, because Len's responses to her feeble hello's and goodbye's were more so bitter than, well, cheerful - but she was making progress. She was getting something more than just a glare or blank expression, and that was better than nothing.

Now he rolled his eyes, or sighed irritatedly, or answered with a curt, unfriendly, "Hi," or "Fine," or "Right." They weren't encouraging, but at the end of the day she kept reminding herself of why she was doing this: because she wanted to be a better sister. That was enough motivation to keep her going.

She took notice that Len was a little less rigid and cold when their parents weren't around. The replies or reactions would come more naturally, like he didn't have to think about how he acted - but in the presence of others, he would become stiff and hesitant, as if he was afraid they'd snap at him for simply breathing in a way that was 'out of character', for him being something other than pensive and silent.

Rin understood. Although she was the favourite child, the blessed child, she, too, was afraid of her parents. While the mistakes and rebellious deeds she had done in her earlier teen years, whether it was for attention or to justify the fact that she was not as 'innocent' as everyone thought she was, often resulted in the slap of the wrist - she was aware there was a boundary with her parents. She didn't know what or where the boundary was - but she knew if she pushed her limits with them, they could just as easily wave her away into non-existence like they had with her brother.

So she could empathise with his fear of acting any different, and instead of pulling him into a zone of discomfort when their mother and father were present, she left it to secret, comforting pats on the shoulders and smiles to reassure him.

Hopefully, hopefully Len would figure she was just trying her best.

.

.

.

They had been inseparably close until they started school. Rin excelled and pleased her peers and teachers - Len failed miserably. It seemed that wherever he went, so did trouble.

Their parents were not impressed with the boy. It was as if they were always… biased towards the twins - it was clear to them, even at the age of five, that Rin was their favourite. Len was not the cute, pretty little girl they wanted. He was just an extra.

The twins tried to ignore it and acted as if everything was normal up until school began - until his parents started getting called into the school on a regular basis because their child wasn't participating in class, or, their child wasn't behaving appropriately and was back-talking the teacher, or, their child was fighting with other kids in the playground -  _etc., etc., etc._

The principal, in the sixth meeting they'd had about Len that year, suggested taking the boy to the doctor - that his 'withdrawn and destructive behaviour' wasn't normal, and had to be dealt with.

Rin despised it when her brother got into trouble. To her, she couldn't understand what was wrong; yes, Len was quiet, and stubborn maybe, but he wasn't that bad, was he?

She despised it a lot, because every time they'd receive a complaint about her brother, their parents would yell, they would yell terrible things at him until he cried, and then they would try to drag her into it even though she really didn't want to be involved or look like she was taking sides.

_"What is_ wrong _with you?!"_

\- She remembered her mother screaming after another meeting about Len. Rin had been sitting in the back with him, but she pretended she wasn't listening, pretended she was too occupied by the scenery outside the window of the car. It was terrible; she didn't want to hear it, she wanted to forget it was happening -

_"Why can't you just be like other kids?! Why can't you just be_ normal?! _I wish I never had a child like you! Why can't you just be a good kid like your sister?!"_

She felt sick with guilt. She desperately wished so much she could stand up for him, but naturally, she was also afraid of the wrath of her parents. Every time her parents would lecture Len for not being like the perfect daughter, Rin, she swore in her heart that he hated her a little bit more than the time before.

His mother took him to the doctor multiple times, but they couldn't find anything wrong, though she insisted there must be something. She was desperate, Rin observed, she was desperate to find an excuse why her son was so disappointing to her. But maybe their parents could never be impressed by anything Len did. It was just a constant routine of yelling at the boy for simply breathing.

As time went on, Len would say nothing in response to the lectures. He never tried. He would remain silent, go to his room, and stay there for long periods of time. He wouldn't talk to anyone, he wouldn't even talk to Rin. He would sit by himself in the playground, despite her many attempts in vain to encourage him to join her, and never said anything in class. But even if he did nothing, trouble followed him. He just couldn't please anyone.

Rin closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. It was times like these where she wished she was someone else - so she didn't have to see this. She wished the ugly feelings of guilt would go away; she wished she could leave them behind with the bad memories, and willed for a time when things were not like this - when things were so much simpler.

.

.

.

Time went on, and Len continued to emerge from his shell of isolation in small, gradual steps. They were beginning to have brief conversations, though her brother was mostly sarcastic or withdrawn, but she tried to keep positive about it.

One particular afternoon, as Rin came home late from a club meeting, she noticed the house was eerily silent - which, indeed, was a stupid thing to notice, considering that her parents were supposed to work late that night and Len was incredibly quiet in any given circumstance. But the house was empty, and that was the problem - it wasn't supposed to be.

Len didn't usually come home after Rin - either they arrived around the same time, or she came home last, so it was peculiar. Yes, sometimes he had club, but the meetings were often rare and in between; at this time, it was a little strange for him to have a meeting.

Nevertheless, Rin decided to have her bath and tried not to be too concerned about it. She had his phone number, so she could always call him to check if he was okay should he not turn up - she couldn't help but worry about him.

When she first left the bathroom, she assumed that no one came home yet. It was still quiet, the house remained seemingly untouched. She frowned to herself and reluctantly thought back to her previous idea of calling Len. It was something she wasn't exactly keen on - they never called each other, and heck… she wasn't even sure if she had the right number.

But to her relief, as she made her way down the hallway in deep thought, she noticed her brother's bedroom light was on. Curiosity got the better of her and she shot a side glance as she strolled past, spotting Len hunched on the edge of his bed with a handful of bloodied tissues covering his face.

Rin's heart skipped a beat and she paused, moving backwards to reconfirm her apparent observation. Upon noticing her presence, Len glanced up, his gaze hardening, revealing a bruised face and a bleeding nose.

She couldn't help herself but ask, "W…what happened?"

He looked away, his eyes falling back to the floor. "None of your business," he grunted curtly, his voice muffled by the tissues.

Rin faltered. He looked like he'd gotten into some gang fight - and, honestly, she didn't think he'd be the type to be involved with gangs. But then again, she probably wouldn't be surprised if it was from something like that. She opened and closed her mouth, an indecisiveness washing over her, before she spoke up in a quiet voice: "U-um, there's a first aid kit in the bathroom…?"

Len's eyelids fluttered, almost as if he was rolling his eyes in irritation, but stood. He seemed to wince at the movement. She backed out of the way warily as he brushed past her to walk in the direction of the bathroom, and after a moment of hesitation, she followed after him.

"It's in here," she told him, reaching up into a cupboard above the counter. Her fingers barely grazed the edge of the box before he leaned in, grabbing the first aid kit; his height being a benefit. She watched silently as he helped himself to the kit, his hands almost trembling as he untwisted the lid from the betadine.

"I can… um, do it for you," Rin added carefully as he shakily dabbed at the wounds on his face.

His eyes darted to her quickly, and he licked his lips. "It's fine," he said in an exhale.

Rin bit her own lip. "Is your nose… broken?" she questioned apprehensively.

"I don't know. How should I know? All I know is that it fucking hurts," he spat. "What, are you majoring in medicine, or something?"

She wavered. "I was just… asking. It doesn't look broken to me, but maybe you should get it checked just in case…" She trailed off, her eyes falling to his hands again. "Are you… okay? Your hands keep shaking." Indeed, they still were, and it worried her a little.

"So?" Len said sharply, wiping some dried blood off his face.

His eyes met hers briefly in the reflection of the mirror. He had an attractive face - well, she thought so, anyway. His cheekbones were high, prominent; his features angular and his eyes the bluest blue she'd seen. It was hard not to look at his face. It was simply pleasing to look at - except when he was glaring at her or insulting her.

"Will you just go away?"

Rin brushed at her hair nervously and glanced down at her feet, exhaling. "Right. Yeah, I will. I'm sorry. I was just... concerned. I - I'll go, now. Mum and Dad won't be coming home until later tonight, so I'll - I'll be making curry if you want any. Just so you know. If you're hungry. Um." She closed her eyes, willing her mouth to stop speaking. "Sorry." Then she turned hastily and shuffled out of the bathroom, feeling uneasy.

She always wondered if Len had ever had a girlfriend - or, well, had any girls like him. He was good-looking and smart, despite social aspects; she wouldn't be surprised if someone had confessed to him already. But she wasn't certain why he still didn't have a girl he was dating - or even just friends. Like, she was sure there were people who were interested in him - even Miku, her 'drop-dead gorgeous' best friend, had made a curious comment about him, once.

Maybe Len pushed other people away when they did? She had seen him sit with some guys once or twice, at the start of high school - but shortly after he stopped, and they ignored him. It was just really confusing, and she didn't understand. Well, she didn't understand a lot of things to do with her brother, anyway.

While she was staring off into space vacantly and stirring the curry, said boy wandered past her to pour himself a glass of water. Rin had a nagging feeling that he was watching her somewhat, as he hovered at a distance in the far corner of the kitchen, and stayed there for three or so minutes. Giving in to curiosity, she looked over at him.

Len immediately glanced away to the wall, like the colour of it was deeply intriguing. His top lip was swollen, as was both his right cheek and nose. The swollen parts were sickly purplish-greys; they stood out like flashing lightbulbs against his fair skin.

Well, that wasn't obvious at all.

"Um, it'll be ready in about five minutes," Rin spoke up gingerly, referring to the curry. He nodded his head slightly, then stepped forward, putting his cup in the sink beside her, before making his way back to the kitchen door. "Uh, if you want, Len, I can lend you some foundation for your, um, bruises - if you want, if you -" She paused mid-sentence, feeling the nervous word-vomit returning once again. She fiddled with the spoon in her hand, shifting her weight. "Um…"

Her brother hesitated just outside the kitchen door, poised to head upstairs. "Thanks," he said disinterestedly, without looking at her, before disappearing up the stairs.

Was that a yes? Or a no?

She let out a weak sigh, turning back to the curry. She knew he wasn't going to eat with her, but she knew he wanted the curry, too. So she left a plate in the microwave for him, and put a note on the kitchen bench telling him it was there.

The girl ate alone in silence, gazing blankly at a family portrait hanging on the wall across from her, with a little boy and girl who looked so familiar, but were far too happy to be her or her brother.

.

.

.

One particular weekend their parents had left for a business trip, so they had the house to themselves. It was awkward - and undeniably quiet - but Rin felt a lot more at ease with trying to talk to Len. They talked a little that morning, mostly about schoolwork, but it was a lot smoother and casual than the conversations they'd had before.

She wasn't in the mood to study, and instead decided on spring cleaning as a form of procrastination. Len's room was the big question, however, as it was a place Rin dared not venture into.

But this meant the possibility of talking with Len a little more, too - so she knocked on his door, and upon hearing no reply, cautiously let herself in. He wasn't inside - she pinned a guess that he was in the bathroom - and decided to change his sheets for him, because she couldn't remember the last time they were washed.

Her eyes wandered curiously across his bedroom while she peeled the sheets away from his mattress and bundled them up into her arms. A lot had changed since she was last in here - which was, what, almost eleven or twelve years ago? His bedroom looked bare in comparison to the clutter of toys that had previously dominated his shelves; some books had replaced them instead - books about cosmology and the universe, about sci-fi and mystery. It was hard for her not to miss the strong smell of Len, something familiar but also sad; it was comforting, but brought back a lot of negative memories with it, too.

As she turned to walk out of his room, kicking a pair of boxers aside, Len appeared in his doorway with a peeved expression on his face. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice tight.

Rin blanched, feeling suspicious and a little fearful all of a sudden. "I was just changing your sheets… because they're dirty, right?" She laughed to herself nervously, stepping past him to walk into the hallway. "I did knock, but I didn't get a reply so I just walked in… and… um…"

She felt intimidated by his silence. It wasn't an annoyed silence, like usual. It was more an… inimical silence. An angry silence. She swallowed anxiously.

Len clenched his jaw, his eyes boring into hers. Just from that simple look, she could tell he was seething internally. He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it, before swerving sharply away from her to face his room. "What did you touch?" he snapped.

"What?" she asked back, confused.

He swung back around to glare at her. His cheeks were flushed. "You went into my room looking for something, right? You were trying to pry into my business," he hissed.

Rin could feel mortification burning at her face. She realized then that Len still didn't trust her - he didn't trust her at all. "I - I honestly didn't touch anything. I was just coming to change your sheets…" She trailed off, her voice getting lost somewhere in her throat. Len's attitude… was scaring her. "L-Len?"

His eyes flashed; his jaw clenched. "Why have you been so annoying, lately?"

"W-what do you mean?" She squeaked.

Admittedly, she was terrified. She hadn't meant to make him upset - to make it seem like she was poking her nose into his private life. But she forgot that there was still a lot between them that was unresolved - they were still somewhat strangers, that their relationship was still damaged and not at all normal.

Words began to pour out of his mouth - angry words, bitter words. It was like it was all the things he had ever wanted to say to her, but held them in until he couldn't anymore. Rin wanted to close her eyes and cower away, wanted to run away and forget it all.

"I can't seem to breathe without you appearing out of somewhere, nagging me with pointless questions when you seem to care less about my answers," he responded coldly. "Do you not understand that I want you to fuck off? Has my disinterest not been blatant enough for you? What, do I have to spell it in baby language?  _Leave me the fuck alone._  I'm not interested in becoming another one of your  _friendsies_  just because you think you're so pretty and popular and should be friends with everyone, including your pathetic brother."

She stood still, taken aback by his words. Her skin had drained of all colour, turning a pallid whitish-pink, and her confused expression dropped from her face to be replaced with a blank look. "I - I don't… I wasn't…" Her voice trembled while her eyes searched the floor, and she swallowed hard, trying to stand strong. But she felt as if the ground beneath her was crumbling, and her mind was cracking open as if Len had split it with a hammer.

He readjusted his position, standing taller than her. Their height difference had never caught Rin's attention - not until now.

"I fucking hate you. Okay? I hate your existence. You're a bitch, you're not special, you're annoying, and you're hideous. You are not pretty, sweet, innocent or popular. You are an attention-seeking, pitiful, spoilt piece of shit. I  _hate_  you. I have  _always_  hated you. I will never become your 'friend'. And for god's sake, stop trying to talk to me."

Rin dropped the sheets at his feet. It was almost like she was breaking into a million pieces. She could feel Len's smouldering gaze on her, so she kept her eyes on the floor, afraid of him seeing her tears.

"I'm sorry I exist, then," she choked out to the floor between them, before storming down the hallway, her head pounding.

Why did that hurt? Why did that hurt so badly?

Maybe she already knew that he'd despised her, but desperately didn't want to believe in it. Maybe she knew, but she just didn't want to be reminded about it all. She wanted to stop feeling so guilty all the time - but regardless, the regret kept returning.

He was wrong about it all, though. She didn't want to be 'friendsies', or whatever that is. She didn't know what she wanted from Len, but she wanted to establish something between them. She didn't want him to hate her. She didn't want him to think she was some spoilt brat, or some popular girl, or something - because she wasn't. She didn't want to be any of those things. Just - everyone else wanted her to.

Rin curled up on her bed and cried into her knees, like she used to when she was younger. If only she didn't exist, or if things were different. If only she wasn't there to ruin Len's life - maybe then he would actually love her.

.

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

Miku Hatsune had been her best friend since middle school. She was the typical popular girl: bubbly, talkative, attractive, and probably a little bit self-centered. Rin was never really sure why - or how - they became friends. Or why Miku even  _chose_  to be her friend.

"Kaito is  _so_ cute," she cooed one day during their lunch break at school . Her eyes had been fixated on the boy all lunch as he horsed around with his friends, their table typical to erupting into obnoxious laughter every five minutes. She had her face cupped in her hands, a dreamy look on her face.

The blonde simply raised an eyebrow, because that wasn't the first time she had ever heard the statement. In fact, that phrase traced back to the early stages of their friendship, when Miku had boldly confessed her undying love for Kaito one night at a sleepover. The girl had no shame, really.

Rin sighed to herself, scrolling through the camera roll on her phone disinterestedly in an effort to pass time.

"Hey, isn't that your brother?" Miku's voice piped up a minute later, and she lifted her head in curiosity, following the tealette's gaze. Sure enough, Len, who almost stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the group of boisterous teenagers, had wandered towards Kaito with a wary look.

The two boys shared a word with each other; Kaito seemed to laugh at something he said and patted him on the back in rough motions, to which Len just looked uncomfortable. Then they skulked out of the cafeteria together, to Rin's surprise.

"I never knew they were friends," she commented quietly, and Miku glanced over at her.

"Yeah? Well, Kaito's talked about him a few times. Do you and Len not speak to each other that much, or something? Like, I know you guys aren't close, but you just act like you're total strangers to each other sometimes and - I don't know, it's weird?"

The blonde ducked her head back to look at her phone. "We just don't get along well. That's all." The lie was true, though. Her stomach twisted at the thought of their fight from a few months ago; they hadn't even so much as  _looked_ at each other since then, let alone spoke.

She was so close… but then she got ahead of herself and blew it.

Rin closed her eyes in frustration.

"Kaito said something about it too. About how you and Len got really - like, shoddy about something and didn't talk to him for the rest of the day. I don't know. It's just strange, because I'd imagine twins to be pretty tight and all - and well, you guys aren't," Miku said, her voice innocent.

Sometimes, she couldn't tell whether the tealette purposely said things to cause drama. She was one of those people who, after you told them something personal or juicy about you, could somehow let the whole school know all the details the next day.

Rin chose her next words carefully. "Well, we're boy and girl, so we're different. It's not that easy. I mean, I can't just go to him for fashion advice or anything, or get him to paint my nails," she replied, sounding a little bitter. She hoped that her friend didn't pick up on it, though.

Miku soon changed the topic of conversation anyway - something common she would do. She checked over her nails and hummed to herself. "So, how many poor souls have you turned down this week, Rinnie?" she asked.

The blonde looked back up at her friend. "Um, one."

It was easy for her friend; her relationship status was obviously taken and no boy in school was game enough to challenge Kaito's position. "When will you ever accept anyone's feelings? Have you even got anyone in mind?" Miku's lips twitched as she cast a look at her friend.

"No," Rin answered simply. "I'm just not interested in dating anyone right now. I, you know… would rather focus on finishing this year first." She fiddled with her hands, not knowing why the honest truth sounded like lies instead.

The tealette raised an eyebrow, sceptical. "Are you sure you're not a lesbian?" She leant in, her eyes growing very wide. "I won't judge you."

"R-really, Miku -" Rin laughed nervously, finding herself scooting backwards. "It's - I'm being serious. I'm just not interested in anyone. In general."

Her friend seemed dubious, but moved back to her original position. "You can tell me anything, Rinnie," she told her reassuringly.

_Anything I want the rest of the world to know_ , the blonde thought to herself. "Er, thanks."

Then, once again, Miku went back to daydreaming aloud about Kaito for the rest of their lunch break.

.

.

.

Rin could hardly believe her eyes. Or ears.

It wasn't as if she couldn't believe what was happening in a negative way - it was good,  _very_  good, even, but… it was, well, unexpected?

A certain, awkward blonde boy stood at the front of the assembly hall, on the stage next to the principal as she gave a millenium-long speech about  _achievements_  and  _university_  and  _graduating_. Somewhere along the way, Rin became too consumed by her shock to actually pay attention to why her brother, of all people, was up there accepting some  _prestigious_  award for a scholarship to a well-known university in Osaka.

\- Why she, of all people, looked the most amazed and surprised about this announcement than the surrounding students in the hall.

Firstly, she was happy for Len, of course. Perhaps even  _elated_ would be a better word for how she felt. Secondly, she was deeply confused as to when or how Len went for this scholarship. Sure, he stayed in his room a lot, but… stayed in his room  _studying?_

And here she was, being praised for having relatively high marks by her parents - though she wasn't the one earning the freaking opportunity to study a dual degree in cosmology and physics in the  _University of Sciences and Technologies_ , of all places.

Did they even know? What happens if they  _did_  know?

Maybe… this was his chance.

"Len Kagamine applied for this scholarship last year and signed up to the copious task of studying for months on end in order to fill out the applications and become eligible," the principal droned. "In order to simply apply for the scholarship meant for the student to have top marks in physics and scientific mathematics, which Len Kagamine had. However, this scholarship was only available to fifteen students out of the entirety of Japan. Incredibly, he was the only student out of this prefecture to be awarded this wonderful opportunity. We are very proud of his achievements and wish him the best for his future."

The auditorium echoed with a polite applause as her brother trudged off the stage, looking a little pale. Rin followed his silhouette, hoping she might catch his eye to flash him an encouraging smile, but he disappeared into the row of seats behind her, oblivious to her gaze.

She was happy. She was really, really happy for Len.

After school, she managed to catch up to him before he left to walk home - he'd always been keen to leave school, or possibly wanted to leave as quick as possible to avoid being stuck with her.

The boy pretended to ignore Rin as she strained to keep up with his pace, the two strolling out through the front entrance of the school.

The blonde bit her lip anxiously in thought. "Congratulations," she told his back meekly, though she wasn't sure if he was within earshot - or even listening. "That scholarship sounds really amazing, Len. I'm so glad for you."

It seemed like her words of praise fell on deaf - or possibly, ignorant - ears. She sighed to herself and resumed her silence after no reply. But she was mildly satisfied she'd said the words at least, whether or not her brother believed her.

She really hoped he did. But hope was a hard thing to hold on to.

At dinner that night - even though Len was scarce, in his room - Rin spoke up. "You know," she said carefully, staring down at her plate, "Len won a scholarship to that University of Sciences and Technologies in Osaka. Don't you think that's great?"

Nothing. Nothing but the clinking of cutlery against plates.

"W-well," she mumbled to herself out loud, because she knew her parents were also ignoring her statement, " _I_ think it is, anyway."

Rin stopped talking then, feeling a little embarrassed. At the same time, she was too afraid to say anything more - she was just as terrified of the wrath of her parents, and didn't want to rile them up unnecessarily.

She just hoped they would say something  _good_  about him, for once, but they didn't. They pretended she didn't say anything at all.

.

.

.

When she opened her eyes, she realised she was standing at the end of a long corridor.

She stepped forward, beginning a casual stroll down the hall, counting the sounds of her steps in her head as she went -  _one_ and  _two_  and  _three_  and  _four_ and  _where are we going?_  and  _five_ and  _six_ and  _seven…_

When she struck twelve steps, a voice in her head spoke out softly,  _find Len_ , and her head snapped up, looking for said boy instinctively.

"Find Len," she whispered to herself, almost robotically, "find Len, find Len; I must find Len -"

Her heart tugged, and she glanced around at her surroundings: classrooms lined the walls of the hallway, now - something she did not notice at first. Curiously, she glanced through the windows of the rooms left and right, searching the rows of faceless students hard at work.

_Find Len_.

_I must find Len._

At the fifth door down, her heart tugged again and she swerved into the room, unnoticed. She strolled automatically through the classroom of students that seemed oblivious to her presence; as she ignored them, Rin found herself at the foot of the desk a familiar boy sat behind.

_I found Len_.

As if he heard the voice himself, Len peered up at her from his work, an unreadable expression on his face. He stared at her with dead eyes, before asking bitterly, "What are you doing here?"

"I've been looking for you," she told him honestly. The boy merely blinked in return, as if her quest was barely of interest to him.

His expression suddenly twisted into a sneer, a certain cruelty adorning his handsome features. He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor, and brought his palm down flat against the surface of the desk, the room resonating with a painful  _smack_. Rin flinched, surprised by the action, and the classroom melted away, colours fading and mixing, her surroundings blurring and dripping, dripping, dripping to become -

A courtyard?

She barely bat an eyelid before Len had her cornered against the cold, coarse surface of the school's brick wall. His arms were pinned against the space on either side of her head, his hands clenched so tightly his knuckles were turning a pallid white. He hovered over her with glowing eyes, swirling pools of darkness -

" _Why_ ," he breathed, "why won't you just leave me  _alone?_ " He licked his lips and impatiently continued, "Why must you be so insistent on  _bothering_ me all the time _?_  You're so  _irritating,_ and _childish,_  and  _unsightly,_  and I  _hate_  you."

Rin had barely gotten her mouth open, before he cut her off again, repeating, "God, I hate you, I hate you, I  _hate_  you - I do, you know that? I do, I do, I  _do_."

_He… hates me?_

She choked back a sob and pushed him aside, ducking aside to run away. Len stumbled backwards, and she took off, her feet slamming against the concrete pathway.

_Len hates her, he hates her, he hates her - he does. He hates her, but why?_  -

Her brother appeared in front of her, and with little time to react, she collided into him. Rin struggled to pull away, but unsuccessfully so, as Len had seized her wrist with his hand. She cried out in panic as he dragged her back to his side, and with his free hand, plucked a rose from a bush nearby.

The boy locked his dark eyes with hers. "Admit it," he murmured, rolling the stem between his fingers, allowing the thorns to prick at his skin and draw a deep, red jewel to the surface. "Just admit it -" He broke off as the drop of blood trickled down his hand, then his wrist, before it splattered on the ground.

"- You're  _obsessed_  with me, aren't you?"

_Obsessed…?_

_I'm obsessed… I'm obsessed with Len?_

"Stop," she tried to choke out, but couldn't - the words were lodged in her throat, something preventing them from spilling out, and she whimpered, unable to speak up for herself.

_I'm obsessed with Len_.

Len smiled thinly and brought the rose to his mouth, breathing three words down against the scarlet petals, his eyes watching her from under pale lashes.

_I hate you?_

_I love you?_

_I hate you?_

"You wish this was you, " he whispered, his thin smile stretching into something wide and mocking,  _laughing, laughing at her_ , the scent of the smeared blood on his fingertips metallic, " _don't_ you?"

He released the rose from his stained-red hand, and it hit the concrete beside her feet, melting and wilting and blurring to the colour of old blood upon impact. Then with the flick of his wrist, he pulled her into his embrace, where he cradled her as if she were a fragile ornament.

Her head was pressed against his chest and she could clearly hear his heartbeat, fluttering away in the pattern of -  _one_ and  _two_  and  _I hate you_  and  _four_  and  _I love you_  and  _six_ and  _seven_ and  _you're disgusting, you're so disgusting_ and  _nine_  and  _you're obsessed, you're obsessed, you're obsessed, obsessed,_ obsessed -

Len tilted his head down so that his lips brushed against her ear, the sensation sending shivers throughout her body. "If I give it to you," he murmured in a low, hoarse voice, "if I give you what you want, will you finally leave me  _alone?_ "

Once again, he did not wait to hear her response. His stained fingers grasped her chin and moved it upwards so his gaze could meet hers. In the dark, swirling pools of his pupils, through his maniacal, frustrated expression, Rin noticed something, something peculiar -

_Desire_.

When his lips collided with hers, the putrid taste of blood filled her mouth and dripped down her chin in the sequence of  _one_  and  _two_ and  _three_ and  _I love him_  and  _five_ and  _I love him, I love him_ and  _seven_ and  _eight_  and  _he hates me, he hates me but I -_

_eleven_ and  _twelve_  and  _Len,_   _I am obsessed with Len -_

She jolted awake in her bed. The darkness of her room engulfed her, reminding her of the same darkness in Len's eyes -

A wave of nausea hit her, the walls twisting, her body breaking out into a cold sweat. She threw herself out of her bed, stumbling down the hall - she barely made it to the bathroom before she fell face first into the toilet basin and choked.

Through the dizziness of her head, her terror, and her vomiting, she heard footsteps and a familiar voice - a voice she dreaded to hear at that moment.

She closed her eyes, tried to forget the dream - that terrible, horrible, god-awful dream - as someone reached out to brush her hair away from her face, their hands gentle against her skin.

.

.

.

Rin would shift from periods of uncomfortable hot flushes to paralysing shivers. Every ten minutes or so, she would add and remove the wet flannel from her forehead - shoving it backwards onto the pillow in unrest, cramming it back down over her eyelids.

It had been two days since that dream. She also coincidentally fell ill with a virus that left her bedridden and miserable; the idea of throwing her body into the fiery pits of hell seemed more pleasing than feeling so sick all the time.

All she could do was lie in bed, sleep, and think back to that wretched dream that kept repeating and repeating inside her head.

_Obsession._

_I'm obsessed with Len._

The memory made her feel like crawling out of her own skin. She felt as if she was going crazy. Was she indeed obsessed with Len? The question made her realise how much she  _thought_  about him, day in, day out. She was always looking  _for_  him or looking  _at_  him, relying on his presence; she was constantly thinking and worrying about not being a  _bad sister_ , and continuously wondering about a world where he didn't hate her so much.

She just - didn't understand. Or rather  _couldn't_. Why - why…? He  _hated_  her - but she loved him? Nothing made sense to her. It was wrong, so  _wrong_ , but as much as she knew that, she couldn't deny the feelings she held towards Len.

She didn't want to think about being  _in love_  with her own brother. A boy who was so scarred and messed up by the events of his life, a boy who directly expressed his utmost hatred towards her, a boy who told her she was ugly and terrible and everything she was afraid of being - just - what was  _wrong_ with her? She always knew she was never perfect. But this?  _This?_

It wasn't right.

_Nothing_  was right. No matter what angle she tried to look, she couldn't  _justify_ anything.

Rin crawled out of bed, muscles groaning in protest, and made her way into the bathroom. She looked at her reflection in the mirror as she peeled off her pyjamas. A pale, expressionless girl stared back at her. There were too many features that she could trace back to what Len shared as well.

She touched her mouth; although her lips were cracked and raw from being so sick, they still curved into a similar shape like her brother's.

The only -  _only_  - boundary that separated them from being the same person was the fact that she was a female and he was a male.

Rin turned away from the mirror and skulked into the shower, slumping onto the stool in exhaustion. She hadn't filled the bath or anything, and neither had she the energy to do so anyway - she just gazed tiredly at the tap, before turning her attention back to the shower head.

First the water was too cold - then it was searing. She kept it on that setting, heedless of the warning sting that spread across the surface of her skin, and closed her eyes, breathing in like the pain was aesthetically pleasing.

Her clammy palms moved over the sides of her body, down to her ankles - and she thought in disgust,  _who would want a body like this?_  It was shapeless and child-like, unappealing and scrawny.

She, maybe, hated herself more than Len hated her.

After Rin dazedly washed herself between intervals of staring off into space, she slowly moved out of the shower room and wrapped herself in her towel. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror again, surveying the harsh red her skin had turned. Gingerly she grazed the tips of her fingers over the red marks and winced at the sting that came in return, telling her that she would have to moisturise the burns later.

Then, she meandered from the bathroom to her bedroom with what little energy she had, but halted in the middle of the hallway when she heard a noise.

Someone else had come home.

Rin put her bets on Len, since he would've finished school by now. She felt uneasy towards the thought of having to see him after her recent  _discovery_  - it was already hard enough trying to rid the memory of him being the one who found her first in the bathroom that other night.

She remembered, although his face was painted with a look of discomfort or displeasure, his warm hands brushing against the back of her neck and his small, reassuring words, like, "Just breathe."

He stayed with her, for whatever reason; whether it was because he didn't want her to choke on her own vomit, or pass out and hit her head, or make a mess in the bathroom, when he could have simply just  _left_  her there until someone else found her. He stayed with her until one of their parents woke up and took over the job - despite him telling her he despised her several months beforehand.

Just as Rin turned to walk into her bedroom, said brother stalked out of his.

He stopped in his tracks abruptly upon seeing her, his eyes flicking momentarily over her body and narrowing in on the burnt patches on her bare skin. Len seemed to hesitate for a moment, like he was tossing up whether or not to speak to her, and licked his lips apprehensively. "What happened to your skin?"

Rin placed one self-conscious hand over her shoulder, dropping her eyes to the ground. "U-um, I accidentally turned the temperature of the water up too high," she lied, voice weak - her throat was still scratchy and sore from purging so much yesterday.

She swallowed and glanced back up at Len, who seemed to be scrutinising her. He pressed his lips together and looked away. For a few more moments, she gazed at the profile of his face, silent, before assuming he had nothing else to say, and continued to her room.

She shut her door behind her and changed into a new pair of pyjamas, before climbing back into her bed. Once again, she was staring back up at the white paint on her bedroom ceiling, realising this was not where she wanted to be, or where she wanted to go.

.

.

.

When Rin returned to school, she was struck with the reminder of how fast graduation was approaching. It was the talk of the students, of the teachers - it was as if every five minutes she was reminded that high school would be gone in less than a month. This part of her life would soon be done and dusted.

She wasn't sure where she stood with it - whether she was glad or not, to say goodbye to that part of her life. In a way, she never wanted the peaceful routine to end.

Len had been packing his room up, little by little, over that time. Boxes sat in the corner of his bedroom, some of his furniture a little more bare than before. Soon, the room would be empty, and no sign of her brother ever living in that house would be left. Almost.

"Will you be moving as soon as you get out of school?" Rin asked carefully one afternoon, when she passed by his room and saw him packing some clothes away into one of his boxes.

He paused and glanced up at her. "The university won't be letting me move into my dorm until August," he stated dully. "I'm just packing up now to save me doing it all at the last minute. Why?"

_Why,_  he questioned,  _why did she want to know when he'll be moving?_  She blinked, surprised he even wanted to keep conversation, and shrugged her shoulders lamely.

"I was just curious," she told him.

Len gritted his teeth, looked back down at his box, and placed another object into it. She then realised that her question could've been taken wrongly—like,  _will you be moving soon? Because I can't wait for you to leave_.

She shifted her weight uneasily. "You know… I just thought you'd probably be eager to get out of here. So you would move as soon as you could."

Her brother looked at her once again, but kept quiet, before turning away to pull out something from his drawer to pack into the box.

Rin stood, watching, waiting for a reply, but gathered that one would never come, and backed off to continue walking down the hallway.

"Rin." She stopped, startled, and peered over her shoulder to see Len standing in his bedroom doorway. He set his jaw, like he regretted his actions, and kept his eyes on something in his room to avoid making eye contact with her. "What university are you going to?"

She bit her lip. "Probably the local one - Sankai," she said.

"What'll you be studying?"

"Huh? Oh - uh, law and business…" It wasn't her choice; it was what her parents wanted.

Business or law were the last options on her to-do list, realistically. She wanted to study something to do with music, to broaden her horizons somewhere in that direction, but she knew she wouldn't be allowed to. She wished she had the courage Len had, to do whatever she wanted…

Len raised an eyebrow. "Interesting." He said the word like he knew that they weren't Rin's choices either - he said it like it was almost amusing.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and mumbled to her feet, "Yeah."

"You know, I heard that Crypton one in Kyoto has a great music program," he mentioned offhandedly. The boy hovered in his doorway, eyes flickering back and forth between his sister and elsewhere. "Just - if you were curious, that's all." He disappeared back into his room, not interested in her response.

Rin stood still in the hallway in a trance, her eyes fixated on where Len once stood. She didn't know how he knew she wanted to study music, since she'd never mentioned anything of the sort to him. It was weird, him bothering to offer some advice, or him even caring enough to tell Rin any of that sort information.

She tried not to think too much of it, but after feeling so hopeless all the time, she clung to stupid things to make her feel hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> himi actually originally (re)wrote the dream sequence, since my first draft of it sucked dong. the original is posted up onto her tumblr (whimsyappletea or something like that? there's a link on her ffnet profile, im sure of it) so I highly recommend you go through her tumblr link to read it as it's probably 10 times better than my (poor) adaptation of it.
> 
> extra notes; dream sequence was vaguely inspired by Sword of Drossel/Knight of Letzel.   
> and maybe I put some OMAM lyrics in there. Maybe.
> 
> thank you for all the kudos?? very much appreciated. this update came late bc i was busy being a weeb...


	3. Chapter 3

Graduation was uncomfortable for Rin and her family: it was very, very fake, and very, very wrong.

Her parents both attended, and when it came to Len, they had to plaster smiles onto their faces and pretend that they were just one big happy family. It was painful for Rin to witness, knowing that it was all an act.

Like most family-orientated events, as soon as they arrived home from the graduation ceremony, the picture-perfect family façade disappeared, and their parents resumed ignoring their son and everything was back to how it was the day prior.

Rin spent most of the ceremony feeling awkward, so once things settled and she sat down in her room for a breather, the reality of everything finally sank in, making her feel so terribly hopeless. She had accomplished nothing she'd first set out for; instead of making things better, she made her brother hate her more. Oh, and she had the occasional urge to fuck him,  _unlike most_ normal _siblings._

She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, willing herself not to cry. She cried more than she needed to, nowadays, and it was humiliating for her - humiliating for her to be so weak because she had failed at so much.

She didn't want this. She didn't want  _any_  of this.

Crying a lot was only one part of it. Questioning her existence was another. Why on earth did someone as horrible as her have to live? Why,  _why_  - just why? If there were a God, if there really were one, why did he think to put such a worthless, disgusting human being like her on this planet? Was it a method of torture? Was she just there to ruin everything?

Rin didn't want to be like this. She didn't want to be Len's sister; in some ways, she wished that she'd never been born, hoped that he would've had a better life if she didn't exist.

Maybe if she didn't exist, everyone else would admire her brother the way she did, would notice what made him  _Len_  the way she did.

It was the small things that counted, like the quiet courage and strength he had to face everything, the calmness that seemed to wash over him when he became absorbed in his weird science fiction novels, the slight furrow of his eyebrows when he was concentrating, the twitch of his lips when he thought something was funny, but didn't want to laugh - it was the small things like that that made him so  _endearing_.

She didn't want to be in love with him, but at the same time, she just couldn't help but love him anyway.

One of these days, maybe, she might just disappear.

.

.

.

Miku wanted to meet up with Rin a few weeks after they'd graduated. Most universities didn't start classes until September, so there was indeed a long time for her to just wallow in self-pity and feel horrible about everything. She hoped chatting with her friend could help take her mind off things, even just a little; though, talking to the tealette would often do the reverse.

Her friend took a few sips of her drink and set it back down onto the table between them. "So, Rin, you're really not going to Crypton?"

Rin was in a daze, a bad habit she had developed after having to listen to Miku's ever-so-boring conversations. She blinked, processing that the girl sitting across from her had asked her a question. "Hmm? Crypton? No, no, I'm not…"

She pouted. "But you applied and got accepted, didn't you? I thought music was your dream, Rin. And I was really hoping I'd have my buddy there with me."

Like most of the hobbies she dabbled in, Miku was extremely talented in music. She sang, played like a trillion instruments, and was once even offered a job from a record company, but turned it down because 'studies were more important'. Sometimes she solely believed her friend only did these things just to rub it in to less fortunate people's faces (like Rin's).

The blonde laughed uneasily, keeping her eyes glued to the table. "Yeah, I did, but… it doesn't always work out so easily, Miku," she reasoned quietly.

"Is it your parents?" Miku said.

She glanced up, surprised she'd made such a guess. She never spoke much about them - for example, no one knew about the way they treated Len. In a way, she was always selfishly afraid of him being taken away and her never being able to see him again, or ending up getting him into even more trouble with their parents.

"Um, yeah… sort of."

Her pretty friend twirled a strand of hair around her finger thoughtfully. "You should do what makes you happy. If they love you, they'll accept your choices and support you."

"It isn't… that easy…" she murmured.

Miku's eyes softened. "I know it's easier said than done, but would you rather live an unsatisfying life because you pleased only two people, or a satisfying one because you did what you wanted to do? You are your own person, Rin. I'd hate to see your talent go to waste."

The blonde almost laughed. It was strange hearing something like that come from the tealette's mouth, considering she was top of the class in music, and practically leagues ahead of Rin when it came to her favourite subject.

"I know this is really late," Miku said, changing the topic with haste, her eyes darting around nervously, "but did Len ever come home looking… well, beaten? Just a question."

Rin raised an eyebrow, before narrowing her eyes at her friend, concerned as to why she was bringing up the topic all of a sudden. "He did. Why?"

The tealette looked hesitant. "Did he tell you what happened?"

"No," she replied simply. She'd already clarified that they didn't talk much.

Miku seemed guilty. "Well, I feel really bad about not talking about this at a more relevant time, but things just got so busy and I forgot…" She fidgeted with her nails, apprehensive. "I thought maybe Len might've said something, anyway, but… there were some  _kids_ … I overhead a kerfuffle between Len and them one day, so I kind of went and looked because I wanted to know what was going on."

She shook her head, closing her eyes. "I really didn't catch much of it, apart from the fact that Len was, y'know, having a bit of a punch-up with some guy… And - and they must've said something about you, because he got really upset and said, ' _Stop talking about my sister like that because I'll fucking kill you_ ' - or whatever, like, I don't know for sure, but anyway, I stepped in and yelled at them and I must've spooked Len because he ran away before I could even ask what happened."

She sighed. "It was weird. I know you guys aren't super close or anything, but he seemed really angry when he threatened them. I don't know if it had anything to do with the fight, but…"

Miku caught Rin's grim expression and chewed on her lip. "Do you want me to find out who the guy was? I think he's friends with Kaito -"

The blonde opened her mouth to speak, cutting her friend off.

"No, I'm just… um." She hesitated and sighed. "I thought he was getting bullied or something, at one point, but… I could never get anything out of him…"

"Yeah, well, it wasn't the first time, Kaito's seen them - he told me he's tried to break them up, but they wouldn't listen," Miku stated with an exhale. "I think it was the same guys."

"Why didn't you two tell a teacher?" the blonde then inquired, a sharpness in her tone. "I mean, what if things got really serious? If he got killed, or something?"

Her friend looked back at her with a frown. "Why didn't  _you_  tell a teacher, if you noticed he was being bullied?"

"I  _thought_ ," Rin corrected, "and I didn't want to say anything because I wasn't sure whether he was being rebellious or something and picking fights."

The tealette just fixed her hair. "We just… didn't think of it. I didn't really want to get involved with whatever it was…"

She frowned at Miku and looked back down at the table. "Well, I doubt they were fighting over me. I mean, he practically hates me."

"Why?"

Rin wished she'd said nothing. She especially didn't want to tell Miku about what was happening  _behind the scenes_ , because she knew she'd probably open her mouth and tell Kaito, who'd tell Gakupo, who'd tell Luka, who'd tell Lily… and so on. "It's - it's personal," she answered grimly. "Just - family stuff. I don't really want to talk about it."

The tealette studied her for a while, wary, but asked nothing more, changing the topic to something entirely different - stilettos.

.

.

.

Their parents went away on holiday to visit relatives for a week, leaving the twins to the company of each other.

Rin didn't know if she liked it or not. The repulsive side of her  _enjoyed_  the thought of the chance to be alone with Len for a whole week, even though the thought was ridiculous in itself. Her other side, the small voice in her head, felt fear, uncertainty; the last time their parents went away for an extended period of time, they'd ended up fighting, and she didn't want that to happen again. She was just  _scared_ , like she didn't trust herself with Len, or something like that.

It was… awkward. Well, to  _her_ , at least. She'd shied away from approaching him about dinner, and just waited until he emerged from his bedroom to ask her about it instead. Then, when he'd offered to cook, she'd offered to help - to which he'd naturally declined - and it ended up becoming a small argument of who did what.

Eventually, Rin chose to clean up the dishes instead, and the I-cook-you-clean routine began to rotate between the two.

She found it interesting to watch her brother cook. It was just… cute, or  _attractive_ , if she put it in the gross, I-love-my-brother-more-than-a-brother perspective. He seemed to drift off into his own little world and busy himself with cutting the vegetables or stirring the pot or whatever, like a stereotypical domesticated housewife.

Mostly, she enjoyed how  _normal_  he acted - as in, he just behaved like a regular teenager - and not someone who shut everyone out, or hated the world, or was a recluse, or had terrible parents, or anything of the sort. It was refreshing, somehow.

Len soon became a little uncomfortable under the watchful eye of the one-person audience.

"Rin, can you go do something else?" he would have to say, a curtness to his voice, giving her the warning that if she didn't back off soon things would start to get choppy between them, although his reaction was a little amusing to her. So she'd leave him on his own, because she supposed what she was doing was already creepy enough.

For once, the two ate dinner together, in what seemed to be the first time in six years. It was weird, yet relaxing. Even though they ate in complete, awkward silence, she didn't mind it much because they were at least  _eating together_ , like a normal family  _should_.

On the second last night before their parents returned, it was Rin's turn to cook, and Len's turn to clean up.

She cooked fish and vegetables, because Len didn't seem very keen on anything overly-complicated, and neither was she. As soon as they finished dinner, he entered the kitchen to clean, a funny seriousness about him, as if he were on a mission.

Rin left to do something, then returned to the kitchen to pour herself a drink. While doing this, she watched her brother carefully wipe over the dishes, trying to avoid splashing water onto himself. He had an expression of deep concentration on his face, his eyebrows furrowed and the corners of his lips turned down.

After finishing her drink, she placed her cup into the sink.

Len looked at her slightly, as if acknowledging her presence, and continued to wash, unfazed.

The girl stepped away and grabbed another cup, filling it with water, and drinking it empty before placing it into the sink. She watched in amusement as her brother robotically grabbed that and washed it.

So she grabbed a plate, then placed it in the sink. Grab, wash, put it aside. She picked up a spoon, licked it, then placed it into the sink. Grab, wash, put it aside. It was like a game.

As she was reaching for something else to place into the water for Len to clean, a wet, soapy hand shot out and seized her wrist. Said brother glanced up at her, narrowed his eyes and hissed, "Would you stop doing that?"

Rin blinked, wary, but she couldn't help the small smile that slipped onto her lips. He then released her hand like it was on fire. "You just seemed so transfixed," she said gently, wiping her arm against her pants.

Len huffed and pulled the plug to let the sink drain, before grabbing a tea towel to dry the dishes and cutlery. "Well, if you're so insistent on  _bothering_  me, put away the dry stuff," he told her in a mumble, handing over some plates he'd already wiped.

She stored them away into the cupboard and returned for more.

"I know you, um…" She trailed off, thinking. "I know you hate me and all, but…" Rin fell silent and looked down at the cutlery in her hands. Where was she going with this? She swallowed anxiously as her brother remained quiet, and murmured to herself meekly, "Never mind."

Whatever she was going to say… he wouldn't care. Or listen. Or whatever.

She just wished he wasn't so  _rigid_. That he would, you know,  _smile_ , or something. That he wouldn't so much as treat her like a stranger. They  _weren't_  strangers; they'd been close before - so why, why was it just so hard…? She closed her eyes, inhaling, exhaling.

But she was also scared - she was scared because of  _those -_ those  _sick feelings_.

Len handed her another plate, but wouldn't let go when she took hold of it. Rin peered up at his face, hesitant, and he looked back down at her, his lips pressed together. He shifted his eyes away from her face, exhaling.

"It…" he murmured. "It wasn't… I…" His hand released the plate and went up to his face, which he rubbed forcefully at, like an itch. He then turned away, hanging the tea towel up, before turning back to watch Rin put away the remainder of the clean kitchenware, threading his fingers through his fringe and scrunching them.

Rin stopped in front of him, glancing back up to see if he wanted to continue talking. But his mouth was shut, his jaw clenched; an air of frustration about him.

"I know I'm -" She closed her eyes, taking a breath. "I'm a bad sister and all, and that I never did anything right for you or anything in the past, but I really wish I could change it, Len. I really wish I could fix it, because I didn't want any of this to happen, and I didn't want… I didn't want you to  _hate_  me, you know? But - but I can't blame you. I really can't. I just… I'm  _scared_  of things. I'm scared of us parting ways on bad terms, because  _I_  don't hate  _you_  and I don't want us to be… I don't want us to hate each other, like some people end up doing. It's just really… really sad, alright? It's really sad, and I don't want that to happen."

She clenched her fists, realising she was shaking a little, and opened her eyes. Len had his attention on his feet, quiet.

"I - I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm - I'm just so stupid sometimes, and I just…"

He moved, and she started, for a split second worried that he might hit her, but he was only going to rub his face again, a sudden exhaustion washing over him.

"No," he muttered, his voice coming out hoarse. "No - you're fine. It's -" He removed his hands, blinking his eyes tiredly.

All of a sudden, Rin didn't feel so scared of him. He just looked… weak, like he was just so  _drained_.

"I… Rin, sometimes I just… don't mean all the things I say. Sometimes I just say things without thinking. It's - it's… I don't…  _hate_  you, okay? I don't hate you. I was angry, and I just… attacked you with things I didn't really mean. It's… I just - I envy you, alright? I envy you."

Rin's expression wavered, before she gave him a wry smile. "I envy  _you_ ," she repeated back at him, fiddling with her hands restlessly. "And I know you think there's not much about you to envy, but… I personally can't see why you would envy  _me_ , either. I'm not… what everyone puts me out to be. I'm not…  _that_ person. I'm  _far_ from that person. And I don't want to be that person, because I'm not."

Len gazed at her, a blank expression on his face. He folded his arms over his chest. "We envy people for things we don't have," he stated evenly.

"Or things they don't have, which you do," she added in a small voice. "Like burdens that restrict you from doing what you want…"

He cocked an eyebrow, disbelieving. "Right."

Her eyelids fluttered in thought. "Well, I  _do_. I envy your independence," she said. "And your honesty." He opened his mouth to deny, but Rin cut in, "You have your life better gathered together than I do. I don't know where I'm going; I don't even know what I'm going to do."

Len snorted; it was the first time she'd even heard him laugh in some way. "I don't think so."

"It's true," she argued. "I really do envy you, Len. Because you work hard to achieve great things, without having to rely on others. You are your own person. And you… you are willing to speak your mind. You are one of the strongest people I know, because you - you've put up with everything for so long, all of this stuff - and you are still  _getting somewhere_  and achieving all these wonderful things, whereas I am -"

 _I am in love with my twin brother_ , she almost said, but caught herself, stopping mid-sentence. Her stomach twisted and she turned away, afraid that he could read the words on her face. "I'm just getting nowhere at all…"

_I am in love with you. Even though I know how wrong it is - I'm in love with you._

Her brother sighed.

"Life doesn't happen the way we want it to happen - that's the first fact I probably learnt, Rin," he explained. "The second fact is that there's no point in waiting for it to go right, because it won't. You have to make things right yourself. That's all I ever did."

"It's easier said than done," Rin mumbled.

Len's hand moved and hovered over her shoulder, but like he decided against touching her, he just let it fall back to his side and cleared his throat. "I never said anything was  _easy_."

Then he left.

.

.

.

They started talking more, which made Rin feel better to some degree.

Her brother, although occasionally short-tempered, had wisdom that went beyond his boyish appearance. He'd grown up in a lot of ways Rin hadn't - and that was inevitable, she supposed, from having to look after yourself for so long.

However, the improvement in their relationship didn't help the desires that went on in her head - if anything, it made them worse. No matter what, she couldn't stop thinking about him in  _that way_.

The advice he'd provided her helped her gain a small strike of courage and inspiration to do something she normally wouldn't. But she already knew the outcome, and it wasn't going to be pleasant.

It was something that had to be done, though.

"Mum, Dad," Rin addressed one night over dinner. Her parents looked up from their meals with near patronising expressions on their faces as if they knew what was coming, and she swallowed uneasily, fiddling with her chopsticks. "I - I… I've made a decision not to study business and law."

The corners of her mother's lips turned down in displeasure. "Why?" she asked, her voice hitching.

The girl avoided their gazes. "I just - I don't want to study them. I want to go to Crypton University of Performing Arts in Kyoto. I have no interest in business or law - I simply want to study music."

"Music is  _not_  an easy career, Rin," her father spoke up solemnly. "How do you know if you will become successful with it? There are many, many musicians out there who have gotten nowhere and are struggling. It's just a waste of time and money."

"I never said I wanted to be a musician," Rin said quietly. "Music is something I love, and I want my career to be something involved with it. I don't care if I'm not rich or famous - all I care about is being happy. With business or law, I know I won't be happy."

"No one is happy with their job, Rin. No one. They all work because they need money to pay their bills and buy their food. No one applies for a job knowing it's something that makes them happy, because that just doesn't exist in the real world."

Her mother's voice was bitter and weary, and for once, the blonde looked up to consider her parents.

Their tired, pale faces stared over at her. She used to think her mother was beautiful, but lately her hair was growing greyer, the lines in her face starting to get deeper. Her father just seemed well-worn, like the only sleep that could replenish him was death.

Something about this realisation struck an extra surge of confidence within her.

She sucked in her lower lip. "You may value that - or believe it. But I don't."

The woman across from her grimaced. "You won't understand until you're homeless and sick and tired and hungry, Rin, because you didn't listen to us."

"So what?" Rin said, her voice growing sharp. "Let me make mistakes. This is what I want, and this is how I want to live my life. You can't tell me what to do, because neither of you are as wise as you think. Hence my twin brother, whom you refuse to acknowledge that he exists. No normal parents would blatantly  _ignore_  one of their children like they aren't even a part of the family, and you know it."

She met their stunned expressions with a level gaze, a little proud. She felt bold in the fact that she'd managed to  _openly express_  her opinion to the people she feared so much.

"Well then," her mother snapped, her eyes growing cold all of a sudden. "If you don't  _appreciate_  our offer to pay for your university fees to study business and law, we refuse to pay for you to study music."

Rin held her eyes, unwavering. "Fine," she answered in a surprisingly even tone. Then she stood and left the dinner table, dumping her unfinished dinner in the kitchen sink on the way to her bedroom.

She sat down on her bed and stared at her shaking hands, her stomach twisting. The confidence she had moments earlier had dissipated, shattered into regret.

Did she really just do that? What would happen if it was the wrong thing to do? What would happen if she  _did_  just ruin her life? She fought back tears and wrapped her arms around her chest.

But Rin knew she really  _did_  want this. She wanted to go to Crypton so, so badly - whenever she thought about staying here, all she could imagine was how miserable and restricted she'd feel. Plus, Kyoto wasn't that far from Osaka, either…

_That was a sick, selfish reason to have, though._

After a while, there was a gentle knock on her door. A strike of fear went through her at first, making her think it was one of her parents coming to argue some more - and in turn reluctantly called for them to come in.

To her surprise, it was Len who entered into her room. Silently, he sat next to her and placed his hand on her arm, as if to say,  _you did good_. But he didn't actually say anything at all, just looked at her, and somehow, even without words, she understood his gesture.

She awkwardly leaned against him and let herself cry a little, although he stiffened noticeably. He then stayed with her for a while, and the two just sat without speaking to each other once.

She didn't mind the quietness between them, because this was his way of showing his support. He was trying.

Just before Len left, he squeezed her shoulder gently and murmured, "It'll work itself out, Rin. You'll be fine."

Even after he was long gone, she continued to gape at the space where he'd stood earlier, reminiscing his scent and the warmth of his body against hers, and wished very desperately to herself that everything would, indeed, work itself out, because  _this_  - this entire  _infatuation_  - needed to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realise there was a big mistake for the university starting dates? a japanese friend corrected me on it, so, um. university starts the same time as schools do in japan (april), so please be aware of that. sorry for my dumbness. :'(


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> friendly trigger warning for mentions of suicide/self-harm in the following chapter. nothing too graphic though.

A sick feeling washed over her as she heard her brother's footsteps move rather quickly down the hall, away from her room.

Her mind was spinning, and she wanted to cry, to run away, to die. She'd just kissed Len.  _She'd just kissed Len._  It was a horrible feeling, it was; she wanted to tear her hair out and rip her skin off and disappear and just -  _stop -_

They were just standing together in the hallway, in the darkness, too close for comfort, a nightmare in itself, she just - she couldn't  _help_  herself -

It'd started as another typical sleepless night for her, filled with dreams that made her skin crawl, made a sick feeling rise up inside of her. Another night of dreams where Len outright rejected her and expressed his utter repulsion towards her, and she would wake up feeling so guilty, guilty,  _guilty_.

To settle herself down from the nightmare, she'd gone downstairs and watched the television for a while - a ritual she had developed when these awful dreams had begun.

There was never anything particularly interesting on at that hour of the night, but she'd discovered that keeping her focus on whatever was on the screen stopped her from thinking too much, and would eventually allow her to fall asleep.

Just as her eyelids had started to droop, a warm hand brushed over her arm. She'd then been abruptly pulled back from her half-unconscious state, eyes wide open and awake, to find her brother's face peering down at her.

To her despair, he had found her, and of all things, decided to chat with her instead of letting her sleep. It was great, them talking and all, but with the unwanted baggage of her crazy emotions, it was also difficult to bear.

"Why are you sitting out here?" he'd inquired.

Rin rubbed her eyes, trying to hide the fact that she was a little annoyed, and mumbled something about her bad dreams, about the TV being somewhat helpful.

However, that answer wasn't enough to deter him - he'd stayed and taken a seat on the couch beside her, but left an empty space between them as if touching each other would be taboo. Len had caught on to her habit, and asked, "You've been up… often, lately. Is it because of the nightmares?"

She'd nodded. He then pressed on, curious. "What're they about?"

"Things," she'd responded vaguely. "Just - you know, people saying that I'm… bad." Deciding that what she'd said sounded stupid, Rin ended up shaking her head. "Never mind. I should - I should go back to bed."

Rin had gathered herself to leave all too quickly, switching the TV off to let darkness and silence resume their reign over the living room.

Len had hesitated at first, then followed closely behind as she cautiously made her way back upstairs, apparently not done yet. Their arms bumped as they walked together, the contact awkward and met with apologetic murmurs.

"Do  _you_  think you're a bad person?" he'd questioned as they stepped into the hallway that led to their rooms.

"I… I don't want to be, but I worry that I am," she'd responded. No  _good_ person fell in love with someone they  _knew_  they couldn't be with when it was absolutely and positively  _wrong_  in all aspects.

Len then stepped out to walk in front of her, stalling her movements. "Well, bad people don't know they're bad people," he'd stated carefully. "And if you're worrying about it, that obviously means you aren't as much of a bad person as you think you are."

Rin lifted her head to gaze at him. "Right," she'd said with doubt. It was easier said than done.

He raised his eyebrow. "What?"

"Nothing -"

It wasn't nothing, but she'd fallen silent all the same. She'd realised he was close enough to smell, to feel the warmth radiating off him. It was like a million alarm bells were going off in her head, saying,  _you're alone, you're together, you can kiss him, you can touch him_ … She felt as if she was going to go insane - well, if she wasn't already.

His head had been above hers - as it had been ever since they were 14 - and his hot breath was angled down such that it was tickling the top of her head. A shameful layer of goose bumps rolled across the surface of her skin in delight and possibly slight fear as well, prompting the girl to shudder, though it'd seemed to have been largely unnoticed by her twin.

After gathering that she wasn't going to talk anymore, Len had cleared his throat, stepping aside. "Uh. Your room is just here."

Rin hovered, hesitant. "Right."

He'd tilted his head down slightly, so that their faces were closer and they could hear each other better. "Um, goodnight?" he'd whispered, his breath hitting the skin on her face.

It'd been torture for the sick things she held inside her heart to be so close yet so far from him, but she didn't  _want_  to feel this way. She so desperately wanted to be  _normal_ , though that seemed to be the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.

Rin had wavered on the spot, unconsciously moving forward. "G-goodnight -" She stopped mid-sentence upon realising the proximity between them.

Len had blinked cluelessly at her sudden pause and opened his mouth to speak, while she - whether it was on impulse or by accident - had positioned her head too far forward and caused their lips to graze innocently.

She'd realised what had happened, of course, but instead of drawing away, she'd panicked and ended up pursuing towards him out of sheer stupid reaction.

Their mouths mushed together in forced awkwardness and a muffled cry of protest sounded from Len's throat. Rin had unconsciously grabbed onto the front of his shirt to balance herself, but only brought him further towards her, despite her best attempts to move away.

Some of her suppressed desires crept up within her then, and she'd pressed back against the boy's soft lips, curiosity getting the better of her. He'd attempted to escape and she faltered, giving Len the opportunity to grab her hand and remove it from his shirt, allowing him to take a lengthy step backwards.

Rin had jerked upright as reality sunk in, choking out some incomprehensible words as panic returned once again.

Her brother, however, had been excruciatingly quiet. His expression was unreadable in the dark, but she knew it would be something close to horror.

The girl had gulped, feeling behind her for the door handle to her bedroom and escaping without a second glance back; she'd feared that nothing decent would come from her or her wandering mouth. Her breathing had been reduced to short, rapid intakes of breath, and now, looking back on the whole thing, she closed her eyes, pressing her hands against her face.

She didn't want to think about it, but couldn't stop replaying the moment where he'd practically pushed her off of him and backed away as if she were a tiger hunting its prey. She didn't know what to think, didn't know what to do. She'd just kissed her twin brother, and the secret she'd tried so hard to keep under wraps had been exposed, and - and worse still, now he knows. He  _knows_ , and everything was  _wrong_ , and she was a  _bad, bad_  sister.

She was a  _terrible, awful, disgusting_  sister. She was the worst.

.

.

.

Somehow, Miku caught wind about Rin's troubles regarding Crypton. She called her one night in July, bubbly as always, though her friend was feeling quite the opposite. "I'm so, so,  _so_  excited," the tealette gushed. "We'll have so much fun, Rin. We will."

"Oh, yeah," her friend responded with a lack of interest. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed; only moments before was she grudgingly packing things away into boxes. Part of her was excited to leave, while the other part found it a little hard to be in high-spirits considering everything else that had happened. "Why are you calling again?"

"Oh,  _oh_  - um," Miku stammered. "Well… an aunt of mine lives in Kyoto and she owns a small cafe. At the moment she's looking for some employees and, um… I was wondering if you'd be interested? Considering you're… you know, in need of money to pay for everything."

Rin frowned. She wasn't exactly sure who had debriefed her current dilemma, or whether she did that herself during one of her hysterical phases a while ago, so she was a little wary. She inhaled shakily, playing along. "Really? Are you working there?"

"Um, yeah, maybe, probably sometimes," her friend replied.

Oh, she forgot Miku had loving, understanding parents with lots of money to spare.

"But that's just one part of why I called you. I explained to my mum about the whole ordeal, which is, uh, why I know my aunt is hiring, but she said - she said she'd be happy to pay for you to come to Kyoto and anything else until you can pay her off. You know she likes you, Rin."

The blonde blinked at her knees, stunned into silence. Finally, her voice returned. "Are you… joking? I mean - I can't really… It's just, I -"

"I'm not joking. Trust me, she wouldn't have offered if she didn't want to," Miku interjected with a laugh. "I think my mum wants you to go to Crypton more than she wants me to."

"It's just - I'll feel really  _guilty_  about it - I can't just take people's money…" Rin mumbled.

"Rin," her friend said in a grave voice. "You want this, don't you? I want you to have this, too. Just take the offer, because we both know you won't find any other way to get the money." Her voice softened. "Really, it's not like we're going to give it all for free… and you shouldn't feel ashamed when you're going to be paying us back, anyway."

Rin swallowed. Why was Miku being so…  _nice?_  It was strange. It wasn't like Miku was mean, but it was kind of… random? People didn't just offer  _money_ , even if you did have to repay it eventually. It didn't make much sense. Maybe she was doing it out of good will, but…

Not in the mood to argue, the blonde changed the subject. "Um… who told you about all this stuff, anyway? I don't… remember telling you any of this."

"Oh." Miku's voice went kind of high. "It - it was Len."

She pressed her lips together thinly. "When did you… talk to him?" She was pretty sure the mention of his  _dearest sister_  probably made him want to puke, so he must've mentioned it to her a while ago.

But why were Miku and Len talking, anyway? They never really had a proper conversation with each other in real life - well, that was what Rin thought, so maybe she was wrong.

"We just ran into each other a few weeks ago when I was out shopping, and he brought it up with me," her friend explained casually. Like she knew Rin would be dubious, she continued, "I mean, I noticed he was looking troubled, so I asked him what was wrong and he just told me a few things about stuff happening at home."

"So he said more? What other things did he tell you?" Rin felt anxious.

She could only wonder what he had said to Miku, whether it was along the lines of,  _my parents blatantly ignored my existence for five or so years_.

The tealette seemed to grow curious over Rin's concern. "He just said you were having trouble with your parents, and that you seemed really upset, which I picked up on, but… yeah. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," the blonde responded with haste.

Miku was silent for a few moments, before she cleared her throat and sighed. "Well, um, if you're interested in the job, you could send a resume to my aunt sometime? Just - it'd be better now than later, that's all…"

Rin hesitantly agreed, so her friend read out her email address, to which she jotted down on a piece of scrap paper lying nearby. After that, the conversation seemed to meet a dead end; still, she questioned carefully, "Are you sure you're alright with paying for everything…?"

"Of course," Miku chirped. "Seriously, don't worry about it, Rin."

"O-okay."

The two exchanged further small talk, such as questions like, "How's Kaito?" or, "Have you finished packing?" until they found there was no longer anything to talk about and hung up - not that Rin minded that much, anyway.

She exhaled into the silence of her room, before getting up and strolling into the hallway. Neither she nor her brother had talked, or even so much as  _looked_  at each other since that night. Square one - again, all because of her stupid, foul,  _god-awful_ desires.

It had been a couple of weeks since then, but things between them remained as awkward as ever.

Rin couldn't bear to see or speak to him, because she felt too sick with shame at the thought. And it seemed that Len didn't want to further elaborate or interrogate her about it either, because he'd reacted exactly as she'd thought he would - she'd probably freaked him out.

She was making her way down the hallway just as her brother exited the toilet. They both saw each other, averted their gazes, and paused mid-action, unsure of what to do.

Len could've simply walked past her, but for some reason, he froze on the spot. Rin fretted, shuffling on her feet, before blurting a strained, "Sorry," and ducking past him.

She didn't know what she'd apologised for, but then again, she could be apologising for everything. Her face grew warm and she quickened her pace in advancement to the stairs, hoping to escape the situation as fast as possible, before her head or heart or some sort of vital organ exploded from the sudden rush of blood.

Just as her foot hit the top step, his voice called out, "Wait -"

Rin glanced up at Len, then away, only briefly enough to see his expression; it resembled something that of pain. He then said nothing else, as if lost for words. His voice returned eventually, strained. "Never mind."

So she continued downstairs without another word or look in his direction.

.

.

.

The blonde often found herself drifting off to think about awful things, but nothing was more repugnant than loving her own twin brother.

What she thought of were things she knew  _normal_  or  _healthy_  people did not think of. And she herself knew she was neither healthy nor normal.

She often indulged in morbid things like suicide, like hanging herself from the curtain - or self-destruction, like pulling out her hair or burning her skin or cutting herself open. The thoughts were pleasing - not pleasing to others, but pleasing to  _her_.

Of course, somewhere deep inside her messed up little head, she knew she would never  _resort_ to them. She was too… cowardly.

Rin  _had_ , however, hovered dangerously on the border of committing such deeds, once or twice. Sometimes she'd go through a phase where she'd be a bit crazy, hallucinative, kind of crumple in on herself, and she'd find herself face-to-face with a knife - but it would stop there.

She could only look at the kitchen utensil with an innocent fascination, before she'd catch herself and put it away before anyone saw, almost guiltily.

On the other hand, sometimes she would try to convince herself that it was  _okay_ , that loving her brother could be something far worse - she could have been a murderer or have terminal cancer, for instance.

Then she would wonder  _why_  it was so bad. Just - why? Why did people  _care_  so much? So what if siblings fell in love? Did it  _really_ matter that much?

But the more she thought about it, the more she discovered that yes, it  _did_ matter - incest was just something that was  _sick_. You weren't  _supposed_  to fall in love with family members, it wasn't _right_. Even nature -  _genes_  could prove that.

Something had gone very wrong in Rin's mind, and no justification could make that wrongness  _morally correct_.

Her growing self-hatred was only fed by the tension between her parents.

They'd become extremely stroppy towards her, almost like they were once treating Len; she found it hard to eat dinner with them, and she couldn't be in their presence without some argument breaking out.

It was hard, because they would sling stinging insults and veiled contempt her way to wear her down, and the only reasonable way to react to that was to take what they said to heart, as if she didn't feel enough  _contempt_ for herself as it was -

\- She was an  _immature_  and  _useless_  and  _unwise_  daughter, and  _this_ , and  _that_ , and she was a  _disappointment_ , and she also harboured disgusting feelings for her twin, and  _so on_.

Rin felt like she had no hope left. Or rather, no future.

Her enthusiasm for university had fizzed into a rather heavy dread of how much  _disappointment_  she may bring if she attends there. She no longer had motivation for anything, apart from the motivation to  _escape_ , so she hid in her room most of the time, packing things away into boxes and curling up to cry in her bed.

Even she had to admit it was pathetic - but she didn't have the willpower to  _stop_  being pathetic. It was a relentless, vicious cycle of her lack of motivation and self-loathing, and there was no way out.

She felt like she was drowning, slowly, slowly, until she'd just disappear into nothing.

.

.

**.**

"I… I'm sorry, I know this is a bad time," he began, his voice wavering, "but... I want to - I need to talk to you."

A million thoughts were racing through her head:  _why does he want to talk to me at this hour? Is he going to yell at me? Is he going to tell me I'm a horrible sister? That I'm a sick person? He knows, he knows, he knows -_

It was the early hours of the morning, and Rin'd only come out to use the bathroom, awake after a somewhat hazy, happy dream.

From memory, she and Len were only talking in that dream like normal people. Her brother kept telling her how beautiful she was, touching her with friendly, intimate gestures; placing his hand on her arm or thigh, or tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before smiling at her.

She couldn't remember what else they'd talked about, or specific details of what the dream was really about. She just woke up in the middle of it all, and found herself staring up at the ceiling in her room, dazed, trying to figure out if it was real or not.

Coincidentally, her brother had been wandering around the house in the middle of the night as well. He spotted her, and now she couldn't escape - to be confronted by Len was the last thing she needed.

She wanted to say no, she wanted to run away and hide - but found her mouth automatically agreeing to the offer. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth with regret, falling back into silence.

They filed into her room quietly, Rin turning to sit on her bed and Len keeping at a careful distance, leaning up against the desk in her room. He began by asking her about university, and they shared their anxieties for what it would hold.

Len admitted that he feared the people would be far smarter than him in his classes - she remembered that, in his case, he was always familiar with being one of the smartest kids in high school, and university would be very different.

Rin, in turn, told him she was scared of being the worst. It was a stupid kind of phobia to have - but she felt like she would simply mess up this opportunity herself, because she seemed to have already failed in every other aspect of her life.

Her brother seemed to disagree with that point. He was adamant on how  _brilliant_  she was with her music performing skills - and even when she tried to rebut it by pointing out her trouble with theory, by comparing herself to Miku, he refused to change his mind.

"You make up for it with practical performance, Rin - I mean, you wouldn't have been accepted into the university if you were honestly that bad," he told her solemnly. "You can work hard for theory, but nothing -  _nothing_  can deny talent like yours."

"Yes, but…" Her voice grew hoarse, and she swallowed thickly. "It's hard when everything you do is wrong - just nothing seems to be right anymore. Nothing."

Len sensed her distress, and made an attempt to comfort her by rubbing her shoulder. He then closed his eyes and shook his head, explaining to her the best he could of how her wrongs were rights - they were rights in the fact that she'd experienced them, learnt from them, that everything happened for a reason.

But if things happened for a reason,  _why_  did  _she_  fall in  _love_  with her very own  _brother?_

If only he knew what he was talking about, what he was referring to, in her own mind.

She didn't understand. She told him how she didn't understand how  _torture_  would be right - and then she just - shattered. She couldn't hold it in anymore.

There was a certain fear in Len's eyes. What for, she didn't know.

He began telling her how he couldn't bear watching her going through the same pain; that their parents were just broken people who didn't love themselves enough to love other people.

\- That she was  _not_  the hurtful things they said, that she was brilliant, pretty and smart - and not useless or disappointing or worthless.

But she could only argue feebly that he didn't understand what she meant. He didn't understand because he was trying to make something okay when it wasn't, that it was wrong - it was so  _wrong -_

"I know it's not okay, I know," he whispered, interrupting her before she got too loud. "Nothing is okay, but that doesn't take away from who you are as a person. There are things we can't help, sometimes, and that's just - we have to  _live_  with it, you know? It's part of life -"

She couldn't breathe. She choked out for air, her chest tight and her throat thick with despair. She could only shake her head to herself, disagreeing.

Her brother stayed and attempted to comfort her until she calmed down, then raised the issue that they should probably head back to bed before he got her into trouble. They eventually said goodnight to each other, though Rin didn't want to just yet, and Len moved away from her in the direction of her door.

However, the boy did not leave, for some reason or another.

He remained rooted to the same spot, even as her vision adjusted to the dimly lit room and she could barely make out the outline of his face. Len inhaled, and, sounding both strained and exhausted, began, "Rin, I, um…"

But no more words were said. Her brother trailed off, pressing his lips together.

She held her breath, high-strung over what else he was going to say. Was this it? Was he going to talk about what happened between them that night? All she ever did was just -  _worry_ , always, always  _worrying_  about the consequences of her actions -

Why couldn't she just silence her mind  _for once -_

Rin could only blink before she realised her brother had stepped forward with a distraught look on his face, hovering extremely close to her. He seemed to linger about ten centimetres from her, before his hands flew up to press the heels of his palms against his eyes, a troubled exhale escaping his lips.

"Len?" she said softly. "What's wrong…?"

The boy, at first, did not respond. He simply rubbed furiously at his eyes, his face, before he lowered his hands and balled them into tight fists. He straightened up, shifting restlessly, opening and closing his mouth.

"I just…  _can't_." His voice came out high and hoarse. "I just - I can't  _do_  this anymore."

His sister dug her fingernails into the palm of her hands, willing herself to speak. She felt nauseous.  _I can't pretend you didn't just try making out with me last month forever_ , she could imagine him saying. Nevertheless, she queried with false naivety, "W-what?"

Len's face contorted into an expression of great distress, and he swallowed hard. For a moment, he turned away sharply, like he was going to storm out of her bedroom, but he didn't.

Rin watched as he clenched and unclenched his hands, the tendons and muscles in his arms shifting and flexing with the action. She bit her lip, just as he swung back around to face her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

His head moved forward, pausing just before their lips could meet. His eyes were dark - there was something within them, something that made him seem very un-Len-like, despite Rin not entirely sure what  _was_  'Len'. Her breathing hitched, uncertain of what to think or feel or do.

Then she felt his lips on hers.

At first, she wasn't sure what was happening. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she was aware that Len was kissing her - he was  _kissing her_  - but she couldn't believe it. Just - it was impossible - he wasn't  _really_ …?

But he was. The warmth on her mouth was real; his hot breath hitting her cheeks, the intimacy between them - it was all very real. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't like  _that_  dream.

Rin only returned to her senses when he started to pull away, his hands retracting from her shoulders like they'd come into contact with fire. Len's face had twisted into a look of disgust - was it for what he had done? Or something else? - and he moved backwards from her shakily.

"I - I just -" he choked out, his voice wavering, and for a moment, he just seemed terrified. Len was so small all of a sudden in the dark, empty space of her room; a distorted expression of horror and realisation on his face.

She knew that feeling.

"Len," she spoke, but he just shook his head.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry - I… I didn't mean to -" he spluttered, backing away. His hands flew up to his head and dug into his hair, his face screwing up - he looked so  _horrified -_

Rin's hand lurched out for his shirt and gripped the fabric tightly. "Len," she repeated, her voice firmer, lower.  _It's okay_ , she wanted to tell him,  _it's okay_  - but it wasn't. It wasn't okay. It was very far from okay.

Len dropped his hands away from his face like lead, closing his eyes and inhaling sharply. "Rin," he said in a strained voice. "Rin, I - I'm sorry -"

"Don't," she cut him off, and his eyes flew open to meet hers. She paused, biting her lip. "You don't - you don't have to apologise."

_It's okay._

_I understand._

_I know. I know and I understand and I_ know _._

She knew what it was like. She understood the terror, the shock, the regret - she understood it all. But she didn't say it. She  _couldn't_  say it. She'd already said too much.

His gaze bore into hers for a long time, studying her carefully with an expression of confusion. Rin wanted to drag her eyes away from his - but they were stuck there, staring back into his, almost challenging him.

Then, like something clicked in his mind - like he could see what she really  _meant_  in her eyes - he moved towards her and in one swift movement had her head in his hands, his mouth pressing into hers.

She had little time to react, to return the kiss; he pushed up against her, pushing her backwards to lean against the bed, his hands warm and tight to keep her from escaping. It was all happening at once. It was happening too fast - she barely had any time to process it.

Why was he kissing her? Why was he touching her? Wasn't this  _wrong?_ Wasn't this  _illegal?_  How was Len so - so bold, so  _unbothered_  by the fact it was his  _sister_  he was kissing -  _how?_

Rin protested with a mumble of his name against his lips, grabbing the front of his shirt; she didn't want him to stop,  _of course she didn't want him to_ , but this was  _bad_ , they were  _twins_ , and nothing made sense - nothing, nothing, nothing.

"Please," she broke in as he drew away for a moment.

Len licked his lips, a sound coming from his throat, his breathing shaky. "You don't want this." It was a statement, not a question.

A nervous laugh escaped her as her face grew hot. "It's - not so much I don't - it's just, Len, this is  _illegal_. This - this - what happens if, if Mum and Dad find us, Len," she choked out, her words jumbling together.

His expression wavered, like the thought had only just occurred to him.

"Yeah," he said breathily as if in agreement, but showed no remorse. "Yeah, I know, but they -  _no one_  has to know, Rin -" Rin closed her eyes, shaking her head, and he continued, "You don't want this -"

"I  _do_ ," she answered tightly, "I do, but this is  _incest_  - normal people don't commit  _incest_ , Len."

Len's eyes softened. "Since when were we normal, Rin? When was our family  _ever_  normal?"

Rin swallowed, but couldn't come up with a decent reply. He had a point.

"They won't know - they won't  _care_  what we do, Rin," he murmured. "We're already messed up enough as it is."

 _We're already messed up enough as it is._ The words bounced around in her head, leaving her numb for a moment.

Then, without letting her get another word in, he kissed her again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (oops, forgot to upload this rip)
> 
> to think this monster had stemmed from a simple summary I jotted down one morning in early February... and now all the stress, pain and frustration from those following five months is over. Done. I don't even know how to feel.
> 
> well, on we go to the last chapter of Bad sister.

After that night, things began to go downhill.

If there was a hell, Rin was certain she and Len would be neck-deep in its fiery pits.

There were days when they would tell one another,  _it's wrong, we should stop_ , when they couldn't even look at each other without feeling some sort of disgust or guilt - and then there were others when their eyes and hands couldn't keep to themselves, when desire took over simple moral rights.

Len was less reluctant, less conflicted; he was usually the first to start the heated sessions, appearing in her room during the middle of the night like he knew she was still awake, thinking about him.

It wasn't like he didn't feel remorse, though - Rin knew he did, because when she occasionally protested against his intimate gestures and reminded him that  _they were related_ , he would look guilty and apologise and run away.

Sometimes, that reminder would come back when they kissed, and they would have to stop, would have to walk away. Sometimes, those thoughts made Rin feel like she couldn't breathe.

They had drawn an unconscious barrier between what they'd do, and what they wouldn't. If things between them got too - too  _much_  - they would know to stop. They would know going any further was pushing the boundary too far.

Rin promised herself she wouldn't go any further with Len, after all, and it seemed Len had also promised himself the same rule.

The thought of having  _sex_  with her brother -  _that_  was - it was  _beyond_ her. It was just - on a whole other  _level_  from kissing him, from just touching. It was something dangerous - extremely dangerous. She didn't want to take a chance, she didn't want to make such a commitment. Sex meant  _giving yourself_  to someone else - and well,  _who_  on  _Earth_  gave themselves to their  _sibling_ , for goodness sake?

It wasn't like she hadn't considered having sex with Len. Yes, she loved him. Whether or not that love was exactly healthy was the real question. But that would be putting themselves at even more risk - it was already precarious enough for them to kiss each other in secret when their parents were home, sleeping in a room just down the hall.

Even just  _thinking_  about the future between her and her brother was nauseating: after this, after they part their separate ways, what would happen to  _them?_  Would they fall in love with other people - would they continue to have an affair in secret? It made her mind spin, because she wanted to be with Len, but - they wouldn't live  _normally_ , like how other couples would.

They wouldn't get engaged and married and have kids - or, well,  _couldn't_  because it was illegal - everything would be a secret. Everything.

Then people would start wondering, wondering  _why_  she and Len weren't falling in love with other people and getting married and having kids, wondering  _why_  she and Len were doing things like meeting up so often -

The thoughts were overwhelming, so she just tried not to think about the future.

About them.

Now -  _now_  - she just needed to focus on staying sane and surviving until they moved out, and keeping everything hidden from their parents and friends and vice versa. Those were far more important - even if they weren't easy.

.

.

.

It was nine o'clock at night, and like clockwork Len appeared next to her desk, one hand smoothing over her hair, an aura about him that meant business.

The last few days they'd been dormant in their affections; Rin had been caught up in a moment of disgust and regret - and, well, Len had respectfully kept his distance, staying in his room until now. The desire fought over the hesitation, and she peeled herself away from her laptop to let him draw her into a warm embrace.

She met his mouth with her own and pressed up against him, his hands balling up the hem of her singlet, letting it drift up. The sounds of their parents watching television downstairs echoed up the hallway, and the pair tried to keep any sound effects to a minimum, as if treading on ice.

One sound out of the ordinary - and that could be it.

Len manoeuvred Rin towards her bed, and she caught on immediately, guessing his intentions.

She broke off the kiss as her legs bumped the edge of her mattress. "Later," she told him, not wanting to risk the possibility of someone hearing them and walking in.

His lips twisted subtly at the rejection. "Rin - "

" _Len_ ," she interrupted in the same tone. "Later, I said. Not now."

She stepped aside with both hands on his shoulders, as if to keep him at bay, and he exhaled, closing his eyes. "They'll probably go to bed in about half an hour, anyway. Just stay here and wait."

Len obediently sat down on her bed, eyes following her back to her desk. Rin could feel his gaze burning into the back of her neck, and willed for time to go faster.

She ran through conversation starters in her mind, trying to find a way to break the uncomfortable, tension-filled silence between them.

Her brother wasn't much of a talkative person. Even though she'd tried to have conversations with him, he never seemed to ask anything back. He would answer her questions obligingly, then resume being quiet. She didn't know whether he felt as bothered as she did about the silences between them - sometimes, not having something to distract her mind meant she'd start thinking too much again.

Eventually, she just went with a very basic question. "Um, so… Have you finished packing yet?"

"Almost. It's just everything I need for now, I guess," Len responded.

"Right. I'm almost done, too. Just a bit more stuff left to - " Rin paused, remembering something at that moment, and stood to dig through a box near her desk.

"I… found something the other day. I don't know, I thought I'd show you." She pulled out a photo frame from the box and handed it to him.

Inside the frame was a photograph of the twins from when they were much younger - one of those cheesy, happy family pictures where they were smiling and holding hands with that air of childhood innocence, completely unaware of the world around them. Len took the frame to peer closer at the image.

Rin watched him carefully. "You can, um, keep it if you want. I've got plenty of photos of us, and you don't seem to have any, right?"

Her brother swallowed. "Uh - well, I did. But then I - yeah." He squeezed his eyes shut, like he was struggling to say something on his mind, then continued, "Yeah, I'll keep it. You know, for the memories."

She smiled hesitantly and turned away to close the box. "Maybe we'll have to take some more before we go."

"Oh. I - well, won't we see each other again afterwards, Rin?" he asked.

The girl paused. There was a part of her that wished she could leave everything behind - leave all the bad feelings and wish they'd never happened, and pretend she and Len were just regular siblings. At the same time, she wished that time would never pass so she could spend more time with him and not think about the reality that awaited them, to lie in his arms longer and not think about how  _wrong_  they were.

But she forgot about Len; about what he wanted to do, too.

"Of course. It's only an hour ride between Kyoto and Osaka, so it would be silly not to go see each other, right?" she said.

"Yeah."

Rin turned back around to see his face. He seemed to be frowning hard at her wall, though it was blank.

She sat back down at her desk and fidgeted with her hands anxiously. "Have you thought about it yet?"

His expression shifted to something far more neutral. "About what?"

"About us. You know, what we're going to do after this."

Len paused, his eyes flickering for a moment. "Isn't it - I dunno, obvious?"

"Obvious?" Rin echoed.

He rose from the bed and moved forward to cup her face in his hands gently, pressing his lips against hers. Then he pulled away, his breath warm against her cheeks.

"It's always going to be like this. Behind closed doors, some - some fraudulent romance no one will know about."

She closed her eyes. "So - what? We just keep doing this?"

"Maybe," he replied. "I don't know. You can't just tell the future with this kind of thing." He seemed to sense her wariness towards the idea. "Do  _you_  want to… continue this, Rin?"

"I -" Rin broke off, opening her eyes to look at him. "I don't know. I love you, Len, I do, but - I don't know. Sometimes I just want to forget that this ever happened - even though the feelings are still there. Don't you feel the same? Aren't you scared, Len? Aren't you scared of us ever getting caught?"

He stood up straight, wiping his hands against his pants. "Hm. Yeah, I am."

Len then took a long, slow breath, like he wanted to collect his thoughts, before continuing, "I know that we can't do this forever. I know that one day, one of us is gonna fall out of love and meet someone new and move on with their life, and this is all gonna be nothing more than a fleeting memory left to collect dust. That's - that  _will_  happen. Our relationship will never have a fairy-tale happy ending. But... I'm in love with you, Rin, and I want to spend time with you, because that's what people do, even if there's a risk associated with it."

She looked down at her feet sunk into the carpet. His words made the knot in her stomach untwist a little, the anxiety in her mind fade a little. Sometimes she wished that when she looked at him, she could forget who they were and love him truly as just  _Len_. But things don't work that way - and that was how it was.

"I guess we should just - leave it to chance, then," Rin murmured wearily. "Just see where life takes us."

There was no point fighting how she felt, how Len felt. She was sick and tired of all the dread and worry, of all the built-up bad feelings that came as a consequence to her stressed nature. She wasn't able to overlook the reality where everything they were doing was wrong, but knowing that it wasn't one of the worst things in the world gave her hope.

At the end of the day, all of this between them would be left behind and forgotten. At the end of the day, nothing really mattered. At the end of the day, two siblings kissing each other was nothing more than a mere fable in the shadows of the real world's catastrophes.

They fell into silence as the stairs began to creak. Rin glanced at the clock, reading the digits 10:00. Their parents were probably heading to bed now. The pair waited, quiet yet attentive, until a door shut down the hallway and they knew that they would be asleep, that they wouldn't be listening.

Len was the first to move, taking a step towards her and licking his lips with apprehension. They met halfway across her room and she reached out to cup his head in her hands, bringing his face down so that their noses met.

His lips twitched; a fondness in his eyes as they bore into hers.

"What?" Rin questioned, but he just shook his head and moved to kiss her on the lips gently.

He steered her back to the bed, hands slipping down to her waist, and she reached around his neck to pull him down with her as she sunk into the mattress. She could still feel his smile against her lips, and pulled away slightly to inquire once again about it.

"I don't know," he told her, wrapping his arms around her back and nuzzling her shoulder. "It's just - I'm happy I'm not - alone. I'm happy to kiss you. Is that, uh, weird?"

Rin could feel a smile on her lips as well. "Well, yeah, I mean we're - "  _Siblings_ , she almost said.  _And most siblings aren't ever happy to kiss each other_.

"Ignoring that," Len interrupted, "let's not think about that. You know what I meant." Then he brushed his lips against her mouth, as if to keep her occupied. He knew how much the thought killed the mood.

His hands bunched up the fabric of her singlet and pushed it upwards over her chest, fingers tracing over her bare skin. She shuddered under his touch, her face burning up. One part of her enjoyed it, another part was embarrassed - and the tiniest part of her argued against it as a voice in the back of her mind, repeating over and over,  _stop, stop, stop._

She dug her fingers into his hair and held her breath in an attempt to silence it.

Len's lips moved away from hers and he pulled her against him tightly, rolling over so she was now lying on top of his chest.

Their eyes met in that instant, and like he saw the hesitation and shame in her eyes, he whispered, "I love you."

She exhaled as he began to kiss her neck, letting the feelings of regret go once again.

 _I love you_.

They were the words that brought ease and pain all at once.

But this time, the phrase just let the warm sensation of euphoria spread through her chest. She wished that every time she heard it -  _every time_  - there was that feeling, because Len was not much of a person to express what he felt through words, and she knew he really meant it.

He really, really meant it.

Rin waited until he lifted his head, and returned the favour by murmuring against his lips, "I love you, too."

Then the smile returned - a smile that just lit up the room, the whole world, even - and he squeezed her gently, holding her close, as if that was his way of showing her that he was hers and she was his.

Maybe somehow, even in the distant future, when they've pushed these memories to the back of their minds to live normal lives, to grow old with other people by their side, they would still belong to each other somehow.

While lying in bed later that night, with their half-naked bodies sharing warmth in an embrace and Len's soft breathing tickling her forehead, Rin decided that she would probably never be normal, and that was okay.

She'd probably never fall out of love with Len; she'd never stop loving him, she'd never stop wanting him, she'd never be considered 'normal' by anyone else. Even if she married someone else and had a family and grew old with them all, it would be a different kind of love to this.

These were powerful feelings and memories - this was a kind of love you'd never be able to forget.

It was unconditional.

.

.

.

Len enjoyed watching those strange science documentaries about space and physics, where they rattled off ridiculous words like  _spacetime_ and  _neutrons_  and  _event horizons_. He'd surface to watch them only on the days their parents were away working, curl up on the couch and become immersed in the jumble of scientific phrases that were enough to make Rin's blood curdle.

A lot of the time, when she'd wander past to go to the kitchen or simply to see what he was doing, his hand would automatically reach out and touch her arm. She'd stop, then he'd turn and look at her with an expression that said:  _Hug me._

Though Rin probably had better things to do than to endure a lifetime of pain by having to watch his shows, she'd always comply to snuggle into his arms and enjoy his company. He would pull her onto his lap and prop his chin on her shoulder, his arms folded over her stomach like a seatbelt.

Even after the show finished, they'd just sit there in the comfort of each other's arms. Time would fly until the calendar clock read 5:30 PM, dangerously close to when their parents usually came home, and they'd still be sprawled on the couch, as though it didn't really matter if they were seen.

Mostly, they would just talk. They would talk about weird things for hours, and Len would say something that'd make Rin laugh. Then he'd smile at her, and she would go  _what_ , and he would say _nothing_ , because he liked to keep his thoughts a secret from her.

As they sat in silence one afternoon while the credits of one of his documentaries scrolled past onscreen, Rin turned her head to ask, "When did you… you know, realise you were in love with me?" It'd been a question nagging at her mind for a while now, so she'd thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

At first, Len had blinked and stared at her, like the question was strange or too personal. Then he swallowed and looked away, mumbling, "Uh, I don't know."

She sat up so she could see him better, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean you don't know?"

He shrugged. "Well, you don't really just wake up and decide, 'I'm going to fall in love with my sister', do you?"

Rin paused.  _Well, I did._  "Yeah - but, wasn't there a moment where you just went…  _oh no_?"

At that, Len frowned but didn't speak. Seeing that look on his face, Rin hurried to elaborate.

"I mean - I guess I'd, you know, started liking you for a while before I really noticed it - but there was this time when I… clicked. Like when everything just - fell into place."

He squirmed under her weight, pulling her back against his chest. "Well, when was  _your_  moment?"

"It was - " Rin thought, biting her down on her lip. "I just had a dream - and I kind of woke up going  _what?_  And then when I thought about it more, I went,  _oh no_. Like it… made me realise what was really happening. How I really felt."

Her brother rubbed his face, musing over his response. "Well, I - I don't know. There was a bit of an argument about you with someone I know, and he said some things, I said some things, and I guess - I guess that was what made me realise, because I couldn't stop thinking about it."

 _An argument about you with someone_. Could that've been the fight Miku mentioned?

"You argued with someone about me?" Rin questioned.

Len closed his eyes and sighed in irritation - not at her, but at whatever memory he was thinking about. "Yeah, a while ago. It was just - stupid. Stupid stuff. Some boys, saying things they shouldn't have. It's - yeah. Yeah, don't worry about it."

An image of her brother came to mind, saying the phrase, " _Stop talking about my sister like that because I'll fucking kill you."_

Now - now it seemed a lot more possible. Maybe it was.

"Well - thank you. For sticking up for me, I guess," she told him gently.

His eyes met hers and he squeezed her arm, saying nothing as he let his actions speak for themselves. They continued to sit quietly for a while, letting the words sink in, letting themselves enjoy the company of one another.

She didn't know which way of finding out their love for one another was better - or worse.

.

.

.

Miku insisted they went shopping together in the last few weeks before they had to leave for Kyoto.

Rin knew gossip-recharging was more important in her friend's agenda, because after a session of window-shopping and pampering themselves, they'd settled down in their favourite cafe and she'd initiated a topic on Len.

"I hear you guys made up, fixing that weird relationship of yours," the tealette said with the twitch of her lip, scanning her freshly-manicured nails. Rin had gotten matching ones - except instead of turquoise and silver, they were orange and gold.

The blonde had to hold back a snort at  _weird relationship_. No matter how you looked at it, their relationship would still be weird. She couldn't imagine how Miku would react if she knew they were, you know,  _romantically_  involved.

She was sure her parents were aware of it, too - just turning a blind eye, because God help their reputations if their very own  _children_  were caught smacking lips with each other.

Rin shrugged. "Yeah. We sorted it out. I guess we decided we couldn't just leave it that way. You know, our relationship. Who - how did you figure that out, anyway?"

Miku raised a brow. "Kaito mentioned something along the lines of it to me - he managed to drag Len out of the house the other day." That explained the boy's mysterious disappearance, and his single-word answer with a roll of the eyes when Rin had inquired about it out of curiosity.

"And I mean," she continued, "it's kind of hard not to realise something has happened. You seem a lot more happier, you know? Like a heavy weight has been lifted off your shoulders."

Rin bit her lip. "Well, I guess," she answered.

The tealette sipped her latte. "It makes me glad knowing you both sorted it out. Len just… needs it, you know? He needs that type of relationship - because, without it, it's just going to ruin him."

"Ruin him?" she echoed with a frown.

Miku glanced up at her. "Yeah. I mean - him not having a proper relationship with his sister. It's just going to ruin things for him in the future. Like, when he gets a girlfriend, it's just going to be awkward and weird for him, if you get me."

Rin dropped her gaze, feeling that knot in her stomach return. "Right. Yeah. That makes sense." Her friend was correct; it would probably affect his future relationships quite a bit. But then again, Miku wasn't aware that  _she_  was more girlfriend than sister to Len at the moment.

She changed the subject to stop thinking about it. "So, how are you and Kaito? Is he going to cope with you gone?"

The tealette laughed. "Well - he's not letting me leave without a dramatic, stutter-filled monologue, at least. But - we'll manage. We're already talking about him transferring next year to a uni in Kyoto, so I guess it's not forever. And Len and you - I guess you'll be seeing each other often considering he's only an hour away, right?"

"Right." The topic had been brought back to Len again. It wasn't like she didn't want to  _talk_  about him - it's just, she didn't want to think. She felt like her thoughts were an open book, and Miku was reading them all; acknowledging what was  _really_  going on between them. "I mean, neither of us have any excuse  _not_  to."

"Yeah," Miku said. "Well, I guess that's good. It's not like what progress you've made so far is going to be thrown away and forgotten as soon as you're away from each other. Maybe we'll all have to catch up sometime, when Kaito moves down."

Rin nodded slowly, the idea sounding strange when envisioned. "I - guess we will."

After they talked a little more, Miku flitted off in a hurry to stay at Kaito's for the night, something about trying to 'make up for all the time they won't spend together'. Whatever that meant - well, the blonde understood without further explanation. Miku was sort of straight-forward like that.

It was late afternoon when she arrived home; her parents were busy preparing dinner for themselves, barely casting an eye in her direction - though they did seem a lot stiffer than usual. She'd just slipped into the bathroom to clean herself up and wind down when she heard Len appear at the doorway.

"How was Miku?" he asked. He seemed to be quite relaxed despite the tense atmosphere surrounding the house.

Rin combed her fingers through her hair, looking at him through the reflection of the mirror. "She was good." Deciding the answer wasn't enough, she added, "She was Miku. Kept asking about you. You told Kaito that you and I were - uh, talking?"

Len rubbed his neck, exhaling. "He beat it out of me."

She felt herself smile. "Right."

"So it was good - bearable?" he queried.

"Yeah. I mean, I don't know how I'm going to endure four years of Miku gossiping into my ear, but - I'll manage, I guess. It's just going to be hard to - uh - " She broke off, and her brother raised an eyebrow. "Keep things quiet. If we want to, you know, meet up."

He strolled over and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, perching his chin on her shoulder. "Well - those things will always be a struggle."

She smiled at their reflections and closed her eyes with a sigh. "Yeah."

Len pressed a kiss against her cheek - his silent way of telling her, "I love you."

Rin wished that, in a way, this life they had would never end.

.

.

.

Time went too fast - too fast for their comfort, too fast for their liking.

Then Len was leaving.

He was nervous, Rin could tell. He came into her room early in the morning and lay with her in bed, his heart beating like a motor against her ear. Even while walking to the train station, he would reach out to grab her hand, his palms clammy, to squeeze her fingers gently.

At least she had Miku with her at the university, at her new home - Len had no one. She told him to make friends, to make the most of the new start, but he looked hesitant. For Len, that never came easy, and she knew that.

They knew it wasn't goodbye for forever, but they treated it like it was.

"Just be yourself," she said to him while fixing the collar of his shirt once they'd reached the station. They had a few minutes spare to say goodbye, although they had already said their farewells at home before leaving.

She could still feel his hot breath against her neck, his hands on her hips, the pattern of the slow grind they'd worked up to while they decorated each other's bodies with kisses -

Len clenched his jaw. "I know. I'll... try."

Rin grinned up at him. "Good." She grazed the tips of her fingers against his hand, and he turned his over to intertwine with hers. "Don't forget to call me when you get there. I want to know you're safe."

"Yeah, I promise," he answered.

"And make something happen, Len," she added. "Have a story to tell me when we see each other again, alright?"

He nodded, swallowing. "I - I will."

She pressed her palm into his - warm, large, welcoming. An automated announcement for his train came over the PA, and they stepped apart so Len could gather his bags. Shortly after, the train slowed to a stop at the station, and it was time for him to leave.

It was time for him to leave everything behind.

"So, goodbye?" he said questioningly.

But not this -

Rin nodded. "Yeah. Goodbye."

Their eyes met - one final moment -

She stepped forward to brush her lips against his briefly, so that it wasn't suspicious, so that the action went unseen by others. Her nails dug into the soft fabric of his shirt, and she leant forward to reassure him, "I love you, Len."

This wasn't the  _end_  -

And he smiled at her, a genuine touch of warmth in his eyes as he whispered back, "I love you, too."

Then his back turned, and he was gone.

_\- It was only a beginning._

Rin felt relief.

She felt relief for him to leave this place. She felt relief that she had a future, not necessarily one with him; she felt relief that he had a future for himself. She felt relief that their future was not suppressed by their parents or their own feelings, that they had escaped a place where words were placed into their mouths and identities into their heads.

No, maybe they weren't right to the world - and that would fray at the edges of Rin's mind for all eternity, destroy her slowly from the inside out.

It'd be in the back of her mind as she heard his voice on the phone later that day, it'd be in the back of her mind as she met Miku at the station a few days later to continue on to the next part of her life, it'd be in the back of her mind as she moved her belongings into her dorm - it'd be in the back of her mind forever, forever, forever.

That bitter truth, it would stay on their minds forever.

But so would love.

Never in her life would she have imagined things to end up this way. Never would she have imagined that wanting to fix her relationship with Len would end up like this - would end up as something  _more_. It could be deemed a failure, perhaps; but she  _did_  fix it, she  _did_  make things better between them.

She wasn't letting Len leave believing everyone hated him, that he was useless -

No, no. She was letting Len leave believing someone actually  _loved_  him.

 _She_  loved him.

And that was important. What things they had mended between each other now meant new possibilities for their futures. Yes, she didn't know what was next in store for them - where they were going, what they were to do - and things were to be left to chance. But from now on, everything would be different.

The future was in their hands. They had made it their own - they didn't have people or labels controlling them, restricting them. Even though they'd have to sneak around and kiss each other behind closed doors, it was the idea of having control of this, it was the idea of having freedom to make this future  _theirs_.

Which was better - being a  _bad sister_  for being in love with your own sibling, or being a  _bad sister_  for not ever sticking up for them?

Where would she be without at least trying to  _change_  the future between them?

Rin realised she would rather be a  _bad sister_  for loving Len, because at least she wasn't  _alone_  - at least Len wasn't  _alone_. She would rather give him an honest love than make him feel worthless, helpless -  _even_  if it was illegal,  _even_ if it put their relationship and reputation on the line.

So she would keep loving him, loving him with all her heart, and continue being the "bad sister" that she was.

What was out of their hands in the future would simply be decided by fate for them.

And that was all.

.

.

.

_so I think it's best_  
we both forget  
_before we dwell on it -_

.

.

.

end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: I don't own the lyrics to Love Love Love by Of Monsters and Men.
> 
> So, so, so. Yes. An open ending was my intention. I wanted to finalise it, but in the sense where the reader could still... imagine an ending of their own? If that makes any sense (it probably doesn't). I didn't want to make a definite 'they ran into the woods to hide from society and lived happily ever after' kind of ending, or one where they ended up separate. Because, incest is quite the difficult topic like that, and all people expect different things from it. I wanted them to still love each other, even if they don't end up together (which, in the likely case, they won't - because society, life, etc. etc.).
> 
> If you don't like how I ended it... well, too bad. I ain't rewriting this. I'm not even going to think about this. I'm dead. I don't want to write anything Bad sister-related, no no way
> 
> Thank you so, so, so much to everyone who has supported this story. I'm not a professional author, nor do I intend to be - I'm just a lame high school graduate who should probably read more. And I am working on that, haha.
> 
> And an even bigger thank you to all the people who helped me complete Bad sister. To my good friend himi (whimsyappletea), my beta/saviour for BS and the author to bad brother, the collaboration-ish(?) piece to this fanfiction - thank you a thousand times over for dealing with my dumbness, annoyingness and impatience. Himi, like, made this happen. I don't know what Bad sister would be like without her help (probably a disaster like everything else I have written? Oops). Thank you also to the other ffnet users - Mockingtale, Chiio Majesty and nebesa - who beta'd/checked over parts of this fanfiction/silently yelled at me for being an illiterate, dumb English shit. Again, Himi and I would still probably be tearing out our hair figuring out how to axe my god-awful word vomit.
> 
> THANK YOU ALL FOR READING HELL-SUMMARISED-INTO-WORD-VOMIT, I HOPE IT SATISFIED (AT LEAST SOME OF) YOU.
> 
> (Don't forget to read the final part to bad brother as well on whimsyappletea's fanfiction account!)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic initially started off as a monsterfic, but whimsyappletea (i call her himi in my a/ns just so you know) rescued me from word vomit hell and we... made it a multi-chapter fic. it was going to be a threeshot, but alas.... i ramble too much. please help.
> 
> so yes yes, this was beta'd by the lovely himi. :))
> 
> oh, and before i conclude the first part i would like to clarify a few things:
> 
> 1) himi brought this up initially, worried this is too similar to born out of thorns by Amaryne on ffnet, which i tried my best to NOT make the same because as much as i am Australian, i'm not that cool, and my writing skills are crapola. (and Amaryne hates me because im a big asshole. dont ask. shit happened.)  
> so, although i dont think many of you lurk on ffnet/have read amaryne's work, please keep that in mind that yes, yes they are both incest stories and they are both angst and there will be similarities because of that - but Bad sister is NOT my sad attempt to rip off Amaryne's works.  
> we have worked really, really hard to make this different and individual from that fanfiction, okayyyyy.
> 
> 2) the sister in the title is purposely left uncapitalised bc i want to annoy all you grammar nazis. fite me in the pit.
> 
> thanks for reading kids. stay tuned for more sin in the future.


End file.
